The Snow Queen
by Darklooshkin
Summary: Rose Potter disappeared at the age of six. In Hermione Granger's sixth year, the Goblet of Fire summons a girl trained to be the champion of a very different kind of game. They wanted a saviour. They got the Snow Queen.
1. Things change

**Disclaimer: none of this is mine. None of it. I just wrote it for fun and letting off steam (strange, right?), but I have no claim to the material it is based on. No money, no profit, no perks, just writing.**

A/N: Well, you know the storyline. Harry/Harriet/Rose/whatever goes missing/is abducted/is believed dead/gets tossed out/runs away from his/her/its relatives/parents/guardians for an indeterminate amount of time. After repeated failures to find and secure The One, a tri-wizard tournament is held. His/her/its name comes out of the cup and is consequently summoned right into the great hall. Think 'familiar of zero'-style plot with one helluva twisted hero coming out each time.

They'd forgotten her. It was bound to happen, really. Even as a five year old, she saw what was coming after what happened at school. It was just _so_ unfair! The teacher had slipped, _on her own_, and broken her leg. Nobody had blamed her. Nobody had even looked at her when it happened. Except her cousin. Her fat cousin who'd been jealous of her getting ahold of the plushy toy during break time. Her bully of a cousin who'd tried to pry it from her grasp before Miss Stenson put him in the corner. Her spoilt, lazy sod of a cousin who would tell on her to her Uncle and Aunt for everything _he_ did... and get her in trouble every time.

All it took was one sentence. Six words that she knew were going to cause her a world of pain.

_The Freak hurt the teacher today._

It was ridiculous! She was _five_! Even _she_ knew that there was no way that she could have hurt the teacher if she tried. Would the teacher have taken the time to calm her down afterwards, saying 'it's alright' if she'd been the one to do it? No.

But it didn't matter what she said. Aunt and Uncle believed her cousin. Not her. She was Freak to them, even if everyone else called her Rose. And that had been it.

This had been two days days without food, without water, nothing but the dark and the muffled noise of life going on outside her cupboard for company. It was too close to winter for the spiders to venture out as much as they usually do and the biting cold of late October had insinuated itself in her closet, leaving her bed-ridden as she wrung every ounce of warmth out of her blanket.

She tried not to cry. Tears, she'd learned recently, came from water inside her body. Water that, she'd found from previous trips to the closet, she desperately needed. So she groaned instead, the fear of her situation and the blinding headaches marking the onset of dehydration dragging pitiful sounds out of her bone-dry throat. She shivered too, the damp cold exacerbating the desperate hunger, the _need_, for a glass of water.

She'd been forgotten before, though only for a day at most. A day without water or food was bad enough that she would take a full week to feel okay again with whatever scraps she was fed after dinner. But she knew she would recover eventually. Now, she was in dire straits. She'd tried sleeping as much as possible, laying awake in the dark and counting sheep until the dreams of green light and loving parents came to haunt her again. But then the hunger had set in, followed shortly by stomach cramps that left her gasping for air. Still, she knew how to focus on other things and fall asleep despite that. Only to be woken up by blinding headaches, her concentration shattered by the pain coming from two places at once. That had been shortly before Cousin's feet thundered down the stairs, covering her little cot in what she really, _really_ hoped was nothing more than dust.

That'd been the time she was waiting for. Usually, Cousin and Uncle would come downstairs before Aunt did, noticed that nobody'd cooked breakfast for them and yanked her out of her cupboard to get everything ready for when Aunt finished preening herself. Not this time. She heard the fridge door open. She heard it close. She heard the tell-tale rustling of the Muesli box. Fridge opens again. Fridge closes again. Silence.

That was when she'd begun to suspect that this time, things would be different. Aunt came downstairs, which gave her a slight hope. There was always something to do around the house and, right then and there, she would have cheerfully broken her teacher's other leg for a slice of toast and some milk. But it was not to be. After waiting for a while and listening to Aunt wash the dishes and put everything away again, a knot of dread started to form in her stomach. This, of course, did nothing for the pain.

By nightfall, she knew that they'd forgotten her. And, with the lock engaged on the outside, she had no way out. The tears came, but she did not care anymore. If that door didn't open soon, she doubted that it would make a difference.

* * *

Somehow, she'd drifted off during the night. Either that, or she passed out from the pain. She sincerely didn't know anymore. Blessed Oblivion disappeared with a _click_!, causing her to jump up from her cold, cold bed. Weak, shivering, wracked by pain and fear, she felt around for her glasses and, catching the tip of the frame, wrestled them on despite the tremors. She looked over to the door and gasped. _The door was open!_

Without thinking, without putting anything else on, the girl rushed through the door, her feet instinctively guiding her to the kitchen sink. Of course, she hadn't counted on the tree being in the way.

* * *

She woke up in a bed. _A bed_! The only time she'd ever even sat in one was when Aunt and Uncle had taken Cousin out and left her to do the chores one night. She hadn't been able to see what the attraction was at the time, far too soft and fluffy for her. Her cot was better, in her opinion.

And now here she was in one, under the covers even, and she felt better than she'd ever had in her life! Okay, so she still felt bad, but the pain in her head was gone and nothing else really mattered right then and _oh my god food!_

It was like she'd teleported to the bowl with hot, steaming _something_ sitting in it. She didn't dare allow herself time to taste it as it went down, memories of some of Cousin's 'pranks' coming to mind when soup was involved, but it went down better than anything else she'd had in ages.

Stomach once again gloriously half-full, she went back to the bed and sat on the edge, finally taking time to notice her surroundings. A tiny bit of fear gathered in her gut when she looked around. This didn't look anything like any room she'd ever been in. For one, the walls looked like the stuff the tables in her house were made of (_wood_, she remembered) and there was storage space everywhere. Shelves, closets, baskets filled with clothing and other strange items. It made what seemed to be a big room quite small.

The view from the window just baffled her all the more. There were trees everywhere! Not like in the forest bordering Privet Drive, which was more of a glorified park than a full-on forest, but more like a city of trees stretching as far as the eye could see! It was all very odd, she thought to herself.

And then there was the door. She could tell it was a strange door, largely because of the old, rusting metal it was made out of. It had bolts running along the length of it and the remains of a yellow coat of paint that seemed to have peeled off long ago. The handle was a big wheel she would probably have a lot of trouble turning at the best of times.

Then the door opened and a strange-looking man dressed in rags came through.

"Ah, so our little... guest is finally awake." He said in a low voice. "Tell me little one, what was it that you were doing in a forest in the middle of nowhere?" The accent was weird to Rose's ears, but she could still follow it.

"Uh... I uh..." She stammered, the pain and exhaustion of the past few days rearing its head again and causing her head to swim. "I don't know!"

"Really?" He stared at her, his expression looking like the one she used when finding a strange-looking plant in Aunt's garden. "Hmm... Maybe we should start again then. What is your name, little one?"

"R-rose." She bunched herself together defensively as she looked at the intimidating man.

"Okay. And where are your parents, Rose?"

"I-I don't know. I've never seen them."

"Do you have a family name, Rose?"

She came up short on that one. Aunt and Uncle had never actually called her anything but Freak at home. She'd looked it up in the dictionary at school a couple of times after learning how to read, trying to fathom just what they meant when they called her by this name. As far as she could tell, it wasn't anything good and she doubted her parents had been called Freak. So she just shook her head.

"I see. Well, alright then! Up with you, let's go meet the others."

"Others?"

"Yeah, you didn't think I lived alone, now didja?"

* * *

Rose spent a year living with these strange people. Apparently, they'd found her during a hunt, starved and dying of thirst on the ground. They'd never seen pyjamas like the ones she'd worn that day before, all bright and colourful like that, which is how she'd been spotted. After waking up, she was quickly introduced to the others in the little settlement and became the uncomfortable focus of the little enclave.

She could read, write and do basic math, which was more than anyone but the elders could , but she didn't have a clue as to where to find basic stuff like food, water or shelter. She did know how to cook some strange things (eggs was one thing, what with the chickens they kept locked up, but what in the world was bacon?), how to clean and how to fix clothing, but that was it.

From what they'd gathered, she had been a slave of some kind, which was not unheard of out in the wilds, but why, then, had she been taught to write down things and do math? It baffled them. Sure, they'd had a few escaped slaves they'd had to kill before their masters showed up before, but none of them sounded anything like the girl either. Had any of the nearby District settlements started keeping them again? They didn't know and, with no information forthcoming from the little girl, all they could do was wonder.

Rose, for her part, neither liked nor disliked this strange place. She liked it because she got clothes, food, water and people to talk to, which is more than she'd ever gotten at her Aunt's and Uncle's place. On the other hand, the work in the small community was hard, replete with carrying loads of water from the nearby stream up the hill, scrubbing the place until the wood gleamed and being taught how to hunt by the settlement's elders. But what she really _hated_ were the looks of suspicion on the other people there and the one or two other kids she was taken to hunt with occasionally. Still, she was fed, watered and clothed for her trouble, so she didn't complain.

Of course, things change. Sometimes by a little, sometimes by a lot. In this case, it was bad timing that did it. The settlement had what they called a 'freedom day' celebration, where everyone would gather around a bonfire in late autumn and rejoice in their forefather's escape from the Districts. Rose didn't know what a district was, but it sounded terrible to her. Still, she'd enjoyed the celebration for what it was (a day off) and danced with the others.

Now, bonfires are a fairly easy thing to spot at the best of times. It's even easier when you happen to be flying over one. And if you happen to be carrying hardware capable of finding a bug sitting on a leaf in a forest two hundred kilometres away, then a bonfire is not something you're likely to miss. Which is why, when a Panem hunting drone flew overhead, it had no trouble at all detecting the fire, doing a quick head-count of the nearby revellers and giving the local militia a complete run-down about the settlement, its estimated number of inhabitants and where it was.

Now normally, this would result in someone dispatching a small task force to go deal with this problem as quickly and as quietly as possible in a couple of months' time. However, the local militia division in charge of patrolling and securing that area just happened to be the subject of a 'surprise' inspection by President Snow at the time the message came through, which meant that the hundred-plus detachment of troops were very, _very _eager to provide the President and his entourage with enough of a distraction to avoid summary execution for, as Snow called it, 'sloppiness'.

But Rose didn't know about that then. All she knew was that, for a day at least, her strangeness was completely forgotten by those that took her in and that people who'd spent the past twelve months or so scowling suspiciously at her were now smiling at the bright little six-year-old.

* * *

The first indication that something had gone very wrong occurred the next day. Some of the men and even some of the younger women had gone on an impromptu hunt after the feasting had died down. They hadn't returned.

The elders tasked the more experienced hunters to go bring them back if they could. By mid-afternoon, they hadn't come back either.

Evening was coming, swift and silent under the layer of clouds. Rose was halfway up the hill with a bucket of water, lost deep in thought, when the hilltop exploded in fire and strange _pops_ rang out across the area. She dropped the bucket of water, panic setting in as she raced back to the little village. The screaming had started shortly afterwards, often broken up by more popping noises as people ran down while she went up. She reached the ridge. It was a mess of broken houses and corpses. The little hut she'd shared with one of the women was just a hole in the ground, its roof and walls so much burning shrapnel on the ground.

Rose passed out.

* * *

"Impressive work, Captain Dunn. _Very _well done. Well done indeed." The elderly man dressed in a suit intoned, his dead, steel-blue eyes watching as the militia men dragged yet another bullet-ridden corpse to the mass grave of what had once been the village square.

"Thank you sir, Mister President sir." The nervous man simpered as he looked at the intimidating figure before him. "All in a day's work, sir."

"Yes, I'm sure. Well, you have redeemed yourself somewhat in my eyes. _But_!" And at this, the man turned to face the Captain. "Do not think that I have forgotten the state in which I found your command. I will be sending a Presidential representative along shortly to inspect whether you have made any progress or not. And if you haven't, then I daresay that darling little Jethro will be honoured to join the Games come summertime."

Captain Dunn paled at this. He hadn't known that President Snow knew about his illegitimate son. Not even his superiors knew that he had a kid! "Y-yes, Mister President, sir. At your command."

"I will leave you to finish the clean-up, Captain. I am going to take a little tour of this village and figure out how, exactly, it managed to escape our attention for so long." And who exactly to blame for it was left unsaid, but heard loud and clear by the soldiers surrounding him. They pitied the poor bastard who'd get shafted for this, whoever and wherever he or she happened to be. As long as it wasn't them...

Truth was, Snow was bored. He'd spent the better part of a decade in power already and, while he did miss his days as a soldier, nothing compared to the thrill of running Panem. It was stressful, it was painful at times, but the thrill of _power_ hadn't left him since the day he'd walked into his office all those years ago. The ability to say who lived and who died. The absolute command over Panem's ressources, infrastructure, peoples and military. The dream of restoring this hobbled nation back to its former glory days. Nothing, not even this cheerful reminder of his life as both a Peacekeeper officer and frontline commander, compared to the never-ending orgasm that was power unbridled.

It had only been three days since he left the Capitol and it was, in his opinion at least, three days too many. But he had to make a decent showing for the news crews, who were facing the usual post-Games slump in ratings and needed something to talk about other than the usual terrorist activities and border skirmishes that flared up come wintertime and, well, pandering to the sheep's bleeting for eventful happenings was part of his responsibilities. One had to make sacrifices, even if one held a God-like hold over the lives of one's dependents.

At least there were corpses. He liked corpses. A corpse had yet to get up and ask him for a favour, which made them alright in his book. Never complained when he kicked one over, either. Which he proceeded to do out of sheer boredom. His white shoes were too perfect, anyway. Nothing like a little blood on them to shock the newsies and sycophants that followed him like the plague.

He came across a crumpled pile of rags lying at the edge of the settlement. Huh. No blood, no guts around her. He looked closer. Did the blast kill her? He'd seen that a few times, back when he was younger. You'd see a rocket or bomb hit and find the occasional corpse with nary a scratch on him nearby. Shrapnel, fire, everything missed, no damage evident at all. Then you'd notice a trickle of blood coming out their ears, or their pants turning a deep red colour... The backblast had killed them by pulping their insides. Not a mark on them, but something vitally important like, say, the brain, now had the rough consistency of chunky strawberry juice. Boom, bam, dead. Still, normally there was _some_ blood leaking somewhere that gave you a clue or two. This one didn't.

He kicked the corpse over. Or, at least he tried to. First, his foot didn't hit a stiff body and turn it over like it normally did. Strange. They'd attacked an hour ago; this body should be as stiff as a board now. And second, the vitally important bit to President Snow was that, a second or two after his blood-smeared shoe hit the corpse's shoulder, the corpse moaned. _Moaned._ Not death rattle, escaping gases or anything, he clearly saw the head move, the face frown and the lips contort in a rictus of pain before the sound escaped.

Hmm, interesting. He stooped down and turned the not-corpse over. Let's see, female by the facial structure, build indicates five-six years old, odd scar on the brow, glasses, long black hair with red highlights, dressed in leggings and tunic made out of animal skins... Wait a second. Glasses. _Glasses_. None of the others had glasses. They had some strange form of slitted eyewear he'd seen some other District escapee communities use instead of glasses, but these were made using plastic and what looks like glass lenses.

She wasn't one of them. And she was still very much alive. "Sergeant!" He shouted for his nominal bodyguard, who was busy staring at the treeline like it had killed his father and made merry with his sister. He would find out who she was and how she got there.

And so, once again, everything changed for Rose.


	2. What one grows up to be

The Career Tribute

_It matters not what someone is born as, but what they grow to be._

_-Albus Dumbledore_

_**A/N: I gave the intro in the random craziness version of this fic rather short shrift, so I decided to flesh out what my version of a Tribute Training Centre and the Capitol's political structure would look like. For the Capitol guys, think Rome-style City-State on the cusp of becoming an empire. Just a thought. Enjoy!**_

Rose woke up in a white room. The bed was fairly comfortable and the walls looked like the ones from where she'd lived before the settlement. Everything was completely, distressingly white without her glasses on. There were strange sounds coming from a box on the side of her bed, on top of which rested the aforesaid glasses. She didn't freak out this time, seeing as waking up in a strange place _had_ happened before and being scared was something she had gotten used to during her lifetime. So she simply sighed, put on her glasses and went to open the door.

* * *

This place was strange, stranger than waking up in the wooden hut had been. She'd seen more new people here than anywhere else in her life beforehand. A couple of minutes wandering through the maze-like corridors of this place had seen her meet dozens of new faces, people of all different shapes and sizes and states of awareness.

Two things stood out to the girl. One, they were all wearing either a strange green uniform or clothes covered by a white coat. Two, they all looked at her once before summarily ignoring her. Rose was fine with that. Ignorance was better than the wary curiosity of the village had been. But that still left her without knowing where she was or what she was supposed to do, which meant finding out. Which meant getting the attention of one of the grown-ups. Rose bristled at the idea. She absoluted _hated_ attention and now here she was, looking for it. It galled her.

So she wandered around, trying desperately to puzzle out the signs and find someone she could talk to. Finally, she came upon a sign saying 'reception', which sparked a dim recollection in the back of her mind about how there had been a reception area she'd had to wait in back when she was first starting pre-school. So she followed the sign until she found a man dressed in green behind a desk, busily typing away at a computer of some kind. Desks were good. Desks meant teachers and learning to her, which was what she was looking for.

"Uhh, excuse me sir?" She asked in her best 'scared' voice. The typing noises stopped.

"Hm. What?" The man asked harshly, clearly annoyed at something.

"I-I need help sir." She found that she didn't need to fake scared anymore. She'd been on the receiving end of many angry looks in her day, but this man was _good_ at them.

"This is reception, not an information booth you little shit. Go bother someone else."

Rose baulked, shocked at the tone that distinctly reminded her of her uncle. Memories of dark rooms and hunger came back. "B-but I-i don't know where to go..."

The man grunted, angrily looking up and down the corridor for some idiot to foist the kid off onto. Spotting none, he sighed and glared at her again. "Alright. What is it you want?"

"I j-just woke up and... well, everything's strange and I was wondering if you could help me?"

"Huh-oh, you're that Barbarian kid they brought in yesterday." His sneer at the word _Barbarian_ telling her that this probably wouldn't be as nice a place as the village had been. "Alright, I'll just get someone to come pick you up. Maybe now that you're awake someone'll finally see sense and kill you too."

With those words, the man picked up what looked like a phone without the wires in it and started talking. Rose, on the other hand, was puzzled. What did he mean by kill her? It was all so strange.

A few moments later, a man dressed in a completely white uniform with what looked like a crash helmet strapped to his head stepped into the reception area and whisked Rose away from the scary bad man behind the desk.

* * *

She was ushered into a small office a few floors up from where she'd been. The room had no decorations in it at all, just a desk, three chairs, a computer and a window looking out onto a courtyard. Nothing much to look at from Rose's perspective. After a couple of minutes sitting in the chair like a good little girl, she got up and took a look at the computer. It looked nothing like the computers at home. They all had that black background with green icky letters on them. This one was all sleek and cuddly, with a nice background and animated animals playing around on-screen. She took a closer look and accidentally toggled one of those mouse things Uncle had talked about one day. The cuddly animals were replaced by pictures of folders and an open box in which she could read text.

_Quarterly District productivity report (summary):_

_As predicted, productivity over this quarter has experienced a drop of approximately two percent across the board, due mainly to assigning goods to winter storage and the Hunger Games preparations-_

"Ah, there you are!"

She squeaked as the man, the old man, first she'd ever seen since arriving, entered the room. "Y-you were looking for me?" She stammered, trying to hide her fear of this man that her mind was telling her was _terrifying_.

"Indeed, since I was the one to find you amongst the Dissidents." he said as he stalked over to see what she'd been doing with _his_ workstation. "You shouldn't have done that." He said, finger pointing at the screen. "This is sensitive information. Under normal circumstances, you'd have been in, ah, _trouble_." He growled, smiling at the soft flinch the girl gave. Ah, fear, his old friend. They made everyone else putty in his hands.

"Sorry, sir. I didn't know."

"It's alright. My name is Corolianus Snow, by the way. And yours, little lady?" He asked, smiling a smile that never reached higher than the underside of his nose while his cold, dead eyes drilled into her.

"Rose, sir."

"That's it?"

"As far as I know, yes sir."

"Alright then, Rose. Now, please tell me how it is that a child of the Capitol found herself in a Dissident village four hundred klicks away from the city." At this, his smile turned into a grim frown. "I am all ears."

* * *

President Snow sighed as he heard the story the chit had told him. It seems that his peacekeepers hadn't been doing as good a job at home as he'd heard. She was clearly from the Capitol; no other place in the nation held any of the technology she'd described to him in detail. Indeed, only the wealthiest of the Families could afford a car and the archaic, pre-War technology & products she'd talked about. But to hide a little girl in a house, under the nose of _his_ authorities, starve her, drug her and leave her to die in a forest far from civilisation...

He thought he'd stamped out the practice of keeping the bastard offspring of servants as unpaid labour when he was still Capitol administrator. Antonius Dobna had assured him that that practice was no longer prevalent anywhere outside of the poorest districts! For such a dedicated servant to Panem to have failed so blatantly did not sit well with Snow. And now here she was, proof positive that his efforts had been undermined by someone powerful enough to hide her from him. Antonius would burn for this. Literally, if Snow had his way.

But that didn't solve the immediate problem of what to do with the girl. Being the bastard offspring of one of the Families was how he'd got started, and he thanked his lucky stars that his mother had had the brains to move back to her District before giving birth to him. The Snow patriarch had tracked him down after his son's death and offered to sponsor his attendance at the newly created tribute training academy in exchange for recognising his father's wife as mother instead of his actual mother. If mom hadn't moved back, he would have fallen victim to the very practice this Rose girl had found herself ensnared in. Pity she died not long after he started at the Academy.

Still, Rose was the child of someone fairly important, important enough that they hadn't simply strangled her and left her remains in a gutter somewhere upon birth. Which meant that she was of good Capitol stock, like him.

With the proper training, she could be more, _much _more than the servant and in-house entertainment she had probably been slated to become if the Family that sired her hadn't tried their level best to kill her without actually running her through with a knife, sword or bullet. Should _he_ do it instead? It would be easy for him. Just do a quick grab, strangle the life out of her, forget this whole idea for good. It was tempting and would avoid a lot of tears and bloodshed in the near future. But he saw himself in her now and cursed his foolish self for meeting her _before_ he'd thought this all through. As it stood, killing her now would probably raise questions with the reporters who'd no doubt already heard about his meeting with the girl.

No, he wouldn't kill her. But he could turn her into an asset for use at a later date. She just needed the proper motivation, is all. And he knew exactly how to motivate her.

* * *

Rose stopped talking, exhausted by the recital of her life up until the point where she woke up in this strange place called a _hospital_. She looked up at the man who'd taken to sitting behind the desk, the grim frown replaced by a fake look of sadness that had still made her heart sing a little bit despite knowing that it was fake. Nobody had ever gone through the effort to put up airs in front of her before. It was uplifing, in a way. Not enough to make her happy, but enough to make her feel a bit better about telling this man about herself.

"I... see." He sighed, laying back and thinking about the situation. Finally, he looked at her. "Clearly, I have failed you."

"E-excuse me, sir?"

"Do you know who I am, girl?"

"N-no?" He looked at her oddly. How did someone go through their whole life as a servant/slave of one of the Families and _not_ know what his name meant?

"I am the President of Panem." Rose paled. Panem. She was in _Panem_. Home to the Districts, where blood, death and slavery were all that awaited those born within them. The horror stories told only a few days ago were fresh in her mind, including the games. _Especially_ the Hunger Games. She started trembling. She was going to die here. It was an odd thought in her six-year-old mind, to have the one who'd dictate how she died just sitting across from her and telling her that he'd failed her somehow. This was very, very bad. Snow just chuckled at her expression, mistaking the look of terror and confusion for one of the little girl finding out that she was expected to defer and serve him as a servant of a powerful household would.

"Oh, stop worrying. I don't bite." As she gulped and nodded, he felt a small smile spread across his face. Odd, that never happened. "I failed you in that you were treated badly by people who should have known better, _done_ better, before you were smuggled out of the city and left to rot in the middle of that goddamn forest on my watch. Now, this is incredibly embarrassing to me. I spent most of my life as a public servant stamping the practice of slavery out. Why bother, when there's the Districts that are so eager to please nowadays? But no, some people still do this and try to get away with it. And they almost did, in your case. Trust me when I say that I _will _find those who did this and kill them."

Rose's green eyes widened before she started crying with relief. He wouldn't kill her. Instead, she had the biggest monster she'd heard of vowing to hunt down Aunt and Uncle for her. Maybe he would get Cousin as well. Oh, that would be the day. She got up, crying and smiling, and ran over to hug the man.

Corolianus startled, then snarled as he flung the girl off him. Shocked and confused again, the girl looked up at him with the joy being replaced by hurt. "Don't you ever _dare_ do that to me again!" He shouted at her. "Now let's make something perfectly clear right here, right now. I am not your mother. I am not your father. Neither am I one of the people that locked you up and tried to kill you. _I am your President_, and you will approach me as such. If you want to display affection or thank me, say so. But don't take my goodwill for granted. _Is that clear?_" He hissed out to her in an undertone that had caused many of his underlings to soil their pants in the past.

"Yes sir. Thank you, sir. I won't ever do that again, sir!" She managed to stutter out as she picked herself up, sniffing away the tears. He relaxed at seeing her tears. Maybe she was cowed enough now to make the next time he shouted at her even more entertaining.

"Good. Now, as I was saying, your former tormentors are going to be hunted down and killed, but that leaves me with the question about what I am to do with you. I can't just let you go since you don't have anywhere to go. I can't put you in the orphanage because your relatives, if they are powerful enough to hide you from me in my own city, are definitely powerful enough to deal with you permanently as well. As for me, though killing you would easily solve the problem now, it would complicate things further down the line. So what I am going to do is formally welcome you into the family as my grand-daughter. You look similar enough to my son to pass muster, which is good enough for the press."

Rose's brain froze. Adoption? Was that what he was talking about? "What?"

"I will welcome you into the Snow family. But, there are conditions."

She looked wary at this. _Conditions_. That's normally a term she associated with getting to eat at home. _You get breakfast under the condition that you clean the house tonight. _Or _my condition for letting you stay in the house over the weekend is that you help do the gardening_. Conditions had never been a good word in her book even before she understood what it meant. "What are they?" She asked, her up-and-down tone of before replaced with one that was too serious to come out of a six-year-old.

Corolianus smiled genuinely once again. Getting her attention had been easy, even with the hugging episode (_presumptuous little idiot_), now for the hook. "You are to acknowledge my son as your father and his wife as your mother at all times. At no point are you to even _hint_ at the idea that they aren't your actual parents, is that clear?" She nodded. Acting as if they were her parents would probably be easy, since she'd never really met her actual parents in memory. "And second, you are to prove yourself worthy of the name Snow. How you do that will be up to you, unless you don't, in which case I will assign a task that you will complete on command, is that clear Rose?" She nodded again. It's not like she had a choice, which was what Snow hoped she'd recognise. "Good. Now, go to the guard outside and ask him to take you back to your room. I have work to do."

* * *

A few days later, Octavian Snow entered his father's office in the Capitol's political sector. He didn't come here as often as he used to anymore, which suited Octavian just fine. Coro, as his wife had taken to calling the old man, was a cold bastard. He distinctly remembered just how cold every time he though about what the old man had done to his mother. He still had nightmares about it, in fact.

He also didn't see eye to eye with him when it came to administering the Districts. Octavian believed that, as a gesture of goodwill, the Hunger Games should be abolished for good. Corolianus would hear none of it.

Oh, it was all well and good for _Father_! _He_ didn't have to deal with upset parents fostering a rebellion in all twelve districts come wintertime. _He_ didn't have to police District borders all through spring, drawing vital ressources away from the Peacekeeper corps, every time one of the damn Barbarian brats went missing. No, President Snow didn't worry about such things. District Governor Snow, on the other hand, _did_.

Not only did the Games kill people it was his job to take care of, no, it also sucked up huge amounts of his department's money and time every fucking year as desperate parents try to help their kids escape too. And who was blamed on the rare occasions where a kid or ten didn't turn up for Selection? Oh yes, it was him. Not the elders. Not the parents. Not the Peacekeepers. It was him, every time, who had to go and explain to dear old dad just why he had gotten a call from the Games organisers again.

So it came as no surprise to anyone when Octavian had District Administration headquarters moved from the Capitol to District one two years into his tenure. Yes, Father had shouted at him, but he shouted at him for every damn thing he did anyway, so might as well make it worth his time.

But, while it was usual for President Snow to summon Administrator Snow for an impromptu dressing-down twice a year, the next shouting match wasn't due until the early days of February next year when the militia heads start whining about how some of the current year's crop of rebels somehow got their hands on a pre-War weapons cache and had taken to shooting up the local barracks when they got bored with dodging the local Peacekeeper force.

So it was with a bit of uncertainty, anger and trepidation that Octavian sat in his father's office's waiting area listening to the CEO of the Energy Board getting his ass handed to him over yet another dismal performance from the 'restore Panem' initiative's repairing of the old electrical grid. He picked the lint off the ceremonial suit Administrators are expected to wear on formal business and ran his eyes over the majestic ante-room for the thousandth time. Murals and insets depicting the victories of Panem over the Rebel Forces during the Dark Days, complete with mushroom clouds and gory peasants, covered every inch of the ceiling. Closer to eye level, paintings representing the idyllic landscapes of the Districts in the process of being tended to by cheerful District residents shared space with portraits of the previous holders of the Presidential title.

His bored musings were interrupted as the ornate doors to the Presidential Office opened with a bang. Watching a portly charicature of a tuskless Warthog made him smile. Storming away was hard work for someone in as desperate a need for exercise as the CEO of the Energy Board. Not to mention funny. It was probably the only source of humour he'd get today...

"Presenting Octavius Snow, District Administrator!" the guard at the door announced in that pompous manner learned by announcers Panem-wide.

"It's Octavian, you idiot. Father?" He asked as he strode into the freakishly Spartan office of the President. Drab colours, a desk, three chairs, archaic phone, workstation and a mountain of paperwork. And that was, aside from the discretely distributed peacekeepers, it.

"Son. Have a seat." Corolianus said, waving his hand at the chair closest to him.

"Okay. Now, before we descend into the formalities, Panem business or family business?"

"Both." the President intoned in a low voice that caused Octavian to sit up straighter in his seath.

"Bad?"

"No, an opportunity. By the way, how is Julia doing these days?" His father asked.

Octavian smiled despite the strange atmosphere. "Fine. She asks about you, you know. It's always 'when's Coro coming to dinner this' and 'how's your father doing' that. It's quite tiring, having to make excuses when you miss another family dinner again."

"Oh, that won't be such a chore for you anymore."

"And why is that? Planning on visiting soon?"

"Yes, but that's not why. You see, I had to execute Antonius for dereliction of duty this morning."

"WHAT?" Oh dear god, what had the old man done now?

"You remember how I told you about where I came from?"

"Yes." Often, and at great length was left unsaid.

"You also doubtlessly remember how I stamped the practice of kin-servitude out as well, then." He nodded at that, often pondering how a man that can advocate the protection of children so forcefully can turn around and cheer the death of twenty-three teenagers every year like it's one of those pre-War ballgames.

"Yes. What does this have to do with you killing my wife's father?" A man who had been something of a surrogate father to young Octavian in the early years of public service, too. The old man didn't believe in helping out unless urged to, and did poorly when he tried.

"Now, now. I had him _executed_." He emphasised that word carefully. "Not out of spite or personal reasons, mind you. He was a close friend once upon a time. No, it was a court order and, by law, only the president could allow the execution to proceed once the sentence is handed down."

"Holy shit. Tried and executed for treason?" It was not unheard of, but damn you had to step out of line for the courts to order it. Treason as declared by presidential office was one thing. Being found guilty of it in front of a court of law required evidence, witnesses, a jury... the list went on. Outside of those mandated by presidential authority, executions were a rare event indeed. Swearing was a slight reaction when your father-in-law gets involved in something so incredibly bad as to warrant that punishment. "Y-you do know neither Julia nor I are involved in anything like that, right?"

"Yes, I am. And trust me, I checked _thoroughly_ on you, Julia and all of your friends before inviting you here." Octavian didn't miss the _be glad you weren't_ the old man was conveying to him. "Now let me explain what happened; last week, I decided to go on an inspection tour of a District militia barracks. During that time, a settlement of Dissidents was spotted nearby and, being in trouble, the commander decided to distract the newsies from his absolute incompetence by staging an impromptu Rebel Hunt. Of course, I tag along, as do a few of the other idiots. Good Press should never be disregarded. Imagine my surprise when the lone survivor of the attack happens to be a child from the Capitol. Imagine Antonius's surprise when he found out that _I_ was the one who found her."

Dead silence met that statement.

"You know the rules Octavian. Antonius assured me that this kind of thing had stopped within Capitol borders. And, while I could give less of a shit about the double-digit Districts, hard as though it might be for me to actually care less about what they get up to out there, I _do_ care when someone is not only doing something like this, but also has enough authority to go about covering it up!"

Octavian spoke up. "He, ah, lied to you then? Is that what this was about?"

The old man massaged his forehead. "No you dolt. He didn't just _lie_. He is the Capitol administrator, the only one capable of hiding this from me. He _lied_, then, when the scum that was doing this tired of the girl, he helped get rid of her, then _covered it up_!" Yes, dear old dad was enraged, alright. Even more so than when he'd stumbled across Mom and the gardener. "He fucking _played_ me, Octavian. Like I was one of those whores of his! I worked hard, _damn_ hard to stamp out slavery in the Capitol and that _bastard _had the unmitigated _gall_ to condone it and help destroy my legacy! He made me look like a _fool_." Spittle was forming on his lip. Dear God, just how had he executed Antonius if this was the state he was in after killing the source of his rage?

Coro settled back into his chair. "Still, I found out. I talked to the girl when she woke up and offered her a deal. In exchange for saying nothing about this, I would take her into our family and see her tormentors brought to justice. I've already talked to the heads of both the militia and the Peacekeepers so that they did exactly that. What I want _you_ to do is adopt her."

"What?" Octavian asked. "Adopt her? _Adopt_ her? Julia-"

"-Is barren." the old man chuckled at the look on his son's face. "Come now son. It's not like it's a secret, really. You've been trying for years after that miscarriage. And what do you have to show for it? Just bills for IVF treatments, gene therapy, doctor's visits... all covered by me, I might add. I read the files after the doctors were done too. Julia. Cannot. Have. Children. And we all know that infertile couples-"

"-Are sent into exile, I know. But you're asking Julia to take care of a girl who was instrumental in getting her father killed. That's just cruel."

"Yet fitting. Her father's meddling is what caused this to happen. With all the damage that's been done with that little revelation, I should think it's the _least_ punishment she could be saddled with under the circumstances."

Octavian hung his head. There was no use arguing with that. Being found an accomplice after the fact was a popular way of silencing the more violent members of the opposition completely legally. Him persisting on this would probably push the old man to explore his usually bloody alternatives instead. "Alright, but I want to know two things." His father nodded. "First, can we keep it from Julia? She doesn't need to know about the girl's involvement in this, right?" A hesitant look, then a nod. "Good. Now second, why do you want to do this Dad? It's not like you to just do this out of the goodness of your heart."

"Oh, that one's easy. We Snows have done a lot in Panem. For Panem too. We are the most powerful Family of them all and have been that way since the Dark Days. But there's one thing, _one thing_, that we've never managed to do."

"And what is that?"

"_There has never been a Snow who won the Hunger Games. _And Rose Snow will be the one to bring us that victory... or die trying."

Octavian could only stare at his father. His father, who was looking back at him with that horrifying grin on his face._ Oh dear god, that poor thing._

* * *

Three years passed since Rose Snow was accepted into the family. Julia never found out about her involvement in her father's downfall and Octavian never said a word about it. They treated her like a daughter, showering her with the love and affection she had so desperately craved when she was younger. She had her own room. She was allowed to study. She only did chores like cleaning up her room and washing after herself. She attended school with the more privileged District children. In short, for three years, she was in heaven. She would always look upon those years with fondness and regret.

Then came the day that would mark the start of a new life for the girl. Neither the Snows nor Rose knew exactly what day she had been born, so they had settled on a date. The final day of Victorius. Once known as Halloween.

Octavian and Julia had cared for the girl as best they could, better than expected even. But that day was her ninth birthday, which marked the end of her life with the people she had grown close to. For she received a letter that day, confirming her entry into the tribute trainee program.

* * *

The District 1 tribute training centre is not what you would call a humane environment. Out of all the training centres, it is the biggest, with the most comprehensive terrain-specific training grounds offered by any training centre in Panem. Rain soaked jungles, stagnant cesspools that pass for swamps on a good day, mountainous environments, small villages, ruined cities, empty plains and lush forests are but a few of the areas that the various career tributes 'enjoy' during their training. Then you have the classrooms offering a high-quality education, complete with the latest in electronic gadgets & computing technology as well as a luxurious set of dorms that include a spa, well-appointed gyms, TV rooms, libraries and even an indoor amphitheatre where the students could indulge in theatre performances, political debates, public lectures and even the odd honour duel.

In theory it's all bright and lovely and a tribute to the generosity of the citizens of Panem in general and the Capitol in particular.

The reality is far more sinister. The tribute training centres provide the best, yes. But the whole purpose of these facilities is to train children to kill on command. The students that roam these grounds, attend these classes, enjoy these facilities and entertain themselves here are stuck in a gilded cage. Outside, no future awaits. Inside, the sole path to glory is through murder. For a select few of them, eternal glory and undreamt of wishes await if they survive the gauntlet of the hunger games. In the meantime, the children learn all about the price of ambition, the cost of privilege and the depths of depravity humans will embrace if only it makes their lives that tiny bit better. And the greatest tool they have is that they can, within these walls, kill with impunity. All have a reason to, though many refuse to indulge in such acts. Mostly. But the children that go here are, regardless of origin, all united in their desperation for advancement once outside the walls.

The elite students, the ones who came from the Capitol's more influential families, were those that stood to inherit nothing since their siblings or cousins would, as they say, get it all. They were sent to the academy to train them to be as ruthless & bloodthirsty as they possibly could be, to prepare them for success in the vicious set-up that was everyday life in Panem. They will brutalise and kill all who oppose their rule.

The orphans, the ones who were dumped on the training centre's doorstep, belonged to the training centre. Only the best would thrive alongside the children of the major families there. The rest would become the target practice Career tributes use to bloody themselves in preparation for the Games. They are both the most numerous and the most viciously competitive students in the centre and will stop at nothing to keep themselves alive.

And then you had the orphans who caught the eye of self-same influential families, adopting them in exchange for services rendered later. These children would be granted the same privileges as the elite, never having to fight their peers for better grades to avoid being used in the training areas as prey to their faster, smarter and stronger peers. Never having to go hungry if they missed a meal after being chased by those looking to eliminate the competition for their grade point average. Never being hamstringed in some way, shape or form before phys-ed evaluations take place, where the fates of those not up to snuff is rumoured to be short, painful and loud. Begging for mercy is not an uncommon sound to emanate from the phys-ed teachers' offices following said evaluation. However, all this comes at a price.

To the families, it guarantees that those with abilities far exceeding those of their peers' get to benefit from their skills, an investment of sorts.

To the adopted, it's an understanding that they will spend a decade calling this or that person boss, master, sir or any above combination, depending on whether the family had adopted them for family-related matters or if they were simply acting on behalf of one of Panem's numerous business interests.

To the other students, it's a means by which the orphans cheat their way out of their proper place by whoring themselves out to the highest bidder. And since a great number of elites attending the training centre have mothers who were 'adopted' by their fathers whilst studying in the centre's halls, there is a grain of truth to the whoring out part of the equation.

Of course, everybody completely ignores the lengths the Orphans went to to net themselves such benefactors. It was normal for aspiring adoptees to sabotage or even outright kill their rivals if it meant making their odds that much better, staying ahead of the pack for that much longer. And after they get what they want, the adoptees still have to shield themselves from assassination attempts by both the Orphans looking for a second round and the Elites looking to warn off the other aspiring adoptees. So they retaliate. And as time goes by, the attacks get more and more vicious while the retaliations become downright horrifying. Most of the deaths are attributed to adoptees looking to save their skins, gradually losing their faith in humanity in the process and pre-empting their perceived enemies by killing them as viciously as they can. By the end, the most successful start murdering for sport, simply because they can no longer dissociate their peers from their enemies. Anyone in their age bracket is a danger, and killing is the only viable response they know that works.

This was the environment Rose came to live in.

* * *

Rose Snow of Panem. Her first two years at the academy had been brutal for, even if the loyalty of Districts 1 and 2 to Panem was legendary, the name Snow was spoken with hatred and disgust in private. The majority of the staff had fought under Corolianus at the Battle of Toronto, the greatest disaster of Snow's career. Not only had he failed to secure the northern border to the Barrens, he had also failed to finish off the remaining descendants of the District 13 Armoured Cavalry regiment. That failure had killed untold thousands, emboldened the rebels and terrorists calling the Barrens home and utterly crippled Panem's chances at claiming the entire continent for itself. The entire force had been drummed out of the militias and the Army in disgrace, most of the regimental sub-commanders having been executed for insubordination and cowardice. And here came their chance for revenge, all sugary sweet smiles and demure countenance.

To the elites and the orphans looking to be adopted, she was a threat and an opportunity in equal measure. There were two factions that formed in the wake of Rose's arrival; those that wanted to use her as a means towards currying favour with the President, and those that intended to kill her because of what her family had done to gain power.

Rose didn't understand any of this, at first. The teachers hated her, the kids either hated her, or worse, tried to get into her good graces and nobody wanted to believe that she was _ just_ Rose. She took to fleeing to the Academy's library when not in class or in her room, preferring the company of books to the other, openly hostile kids. When the library closed, she took to spending two hours at the gym, running, doing whatever exercises the phys ed teacher assigned and generally anything that would make her sweat and forget while her yearmates laughed their asses off at those cartoons they watched.

After a year, a new facet to a tribute's education was introduced to the curriculum: fighting. The children had to attend lessons after class to learn the ins & outs of hand-to-hand fighting, weapons training and how to survive in a hostile environment.

More importantly, students were forced to spend their weekends doing exercises in the training grounds.

These things, Rose took to like a duck to water. She knew how to survive in a hostile environment. The settlement had given her some training in how to hunt, use a bow & arrow and how to handle a knife against most animals that tended to roam around the forest. While she couldn't take a mantis bear in a stand-up fight, she did know enough to avoid one. She quickly gained a reputation for being gifted at fighting and vicious with the people that angered her.

But there was one thing she had learned during her stay with the settlement that came in extremely handy during the weekends; how to build and hide small traps.

Without that skill, Rose would have been dead long before the end of second year. Her name, while still carrying some weight during normal cirricular activities, made her the target of choice in the training grounds. Snow hunting became a regular pastime for any tribute trainee looking to make a name for him or herself, sometimes with entire classes joining forces in order to hunt down and 'accidentally' kill their elusive prey.

Her budding fighting abilities helped a lot against those in her year and above, but soon some of the older kids joined in, teenagers that were head & shoulders above her in terms of skill, abilities, training and talent. She learned early on that to even attempt to engage an upperclassman was tantamount to suicide, courtesy of one of the younger kids challenging a fifteen-year-old to a knife fight. She'd seen the older boy train with his peers during her night-time exercises, often begging off a few lessons even from those a year below him. Everyone saw him as a pathetic moron in terms of fighting ability, a view that had perhaps contributed to the young child's decision to challenge him with knives. The older boy tore the younger kid apart. Literally. If even the worst of the worst could do this to a kid...

She needed to try something other than close quarters fighting. Ranged fighting was out since, despite being really stonking good with a bow, she simply didn't have the muscle to match the bows the older kids used. She would have to close to within fifty-sixty metres if she hoped to hit her target, while the stronger bow's engagement envelope habitually ran into the hundred-two hundred metre range when it came to accurate, direct fire. A spear, while multi-purpose, had the same problem; her range was simply too limited despite the intense training she underwent.

Brute musclepower simply cancelled out any advantage she could think of. Which is when she remembered the old man that'd found her in the forest. He'd taken her out hunting the most, having grown fond of the strange girl. He showed her how to skin rabbits, snakes, goremoles, the works. How to aim accurately and shoot a bow without injuring herself. Even how to improvise a crude crossbow should her bow break during a hunting trip. And, of course, how to make rabbit snares. Bear traps. Trapping pits. Deer stakes. Log bombs. All of it.

And, come to think about it, the kids that hunted her tended to be way too focused on catching her to watch their surroundings as warily as, say, a deer would. Which meant that, if she could figure out a way to scale up the traps and use whatever she managed to scavenge before the weekend, then she could build and use them against her enemies.

* * *

It took a few months to figure out how to scale them up. It would have been sooner, but the pressure was being ratcheted up as both the tension between the students and the coursework became close to unbearable. Without the benefit of having weekends off and little alone time, the best Rose could do was to focus on a few traps she knew required little effort to set up and hide in a relatively short timespan. As she steadily got more and more familiar with how the training grounds were structured, she refined and added other traps to her repertoire. It was often slow-going, too slow in her opinion, but she persevered.

The first time she used traps was, oddly enough, in the desert arena. While the edges had nothing but sand-blasted dunes to offer, the middle was a honeycombed maze of tunnels and rivulets running up to a klick deep in some places. This made the centre a natural gathering point for practically all the trainees, with the cornucopia located in the entrance hall and odd spires providing easy access to the more remote tunnels and the bigger streams. Rose's idea was simple; grab a surprise pack at the outskirts of the cornucopia, run hell for leather for one of the shafts and set up shop near the closest water source. Once there, use the butt of the knife to wear down the underside of whatever protrusion there was and the wire to trip up unsuspecting pursuers during her getaway.

It didn't go well. The chaotic nature of the tunnels meant that the closest water source to the vent she crawled down was, paradoxically, the deepest and strongest underground river of the arena. Unlike with the softer rock further up, the bits of cave closest to the stream itself had either washed away long ago or near impossible to weaken as it was. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that the river would simply sweep anything that fell into it down a nearby waterfall, likely killing the unlucky trainee on impact with the bottom.

She only realised this little problem upon arrival, her panting and sweating frame looking at the completely undefendable space she found herself in with dismay. The other trainees had undoubtedly seen her crawl down the vent by now and if even one of them knew where it led to, then they knew that she would be forced to fight her way back to the surface unless she crawled back up to the cornucopia again. Which meant that the traps she'd planned on testing wouldn't work and she was in a tactically untenable situation, having to watch a dozen different entrances at once.

Okay, plans A and B were scrapped. This left plan C; set up a trap course as quickly as possible and act as bait. She worked as fast as she dared, setting up tripwires along her planned obstacle course and taking careful note as to where she set them. It was an exit tunnel on the far side of the river with two natural bridges the others would have to cross if they intended to reach it. She crawled up and down the tunnel, trying to conserve the glowsticks that came with the pack as much as she possibly could by feeling her way through places where the ceiling stooped down.

At the mouth of the exit, she managed to jury-rig a suspended rock to act as a swing trap. Stepping on the small plate at the exit would trigger a medium-sized boulder, which would swing its way towards the entrance. Anyone engaged in hot pursuit would catch a rock in the ribs for their trouble, though Rose wondered what would happen if anyone were actually hit by it.

Carefully climbing back down, the girl then filled up the two gourds of water she was carrying and put them back in the bag, sealing them tight so as not to lose a single drop. It was nighttime when she heard unnatural noises coming down one of the tunnels. She looked at the entrances on the side she'd come in on and gasped. She could see five sets of bright greenish-grey light from five different tunnels, a sign that almost all the trainees in the arena were converging on her position. She legged it for the exit, careful not to make too much noise as she scrambled up the tunnel in near darkness. Not that it mattered much, as her ragged breathing echoed down into the chamber she'd just left, telling anyone within hearing distance where she was. A muffled shout from one of the others told her she'd been heard, the hunters confident enough in their victory to no longer bother hiding their approach.

Rose cursed as she struggled to get the glowstick to flare up. Right, time to leg it. And leg it she did.

The first wire saw shouts of elation turn into shouts of surprise, the deceptively steep incline of the tunnel being made slippery thanks to the abundance of water dripping off the walls and an incredibly sleek floor Rose had cunningly concealed undernath some sand and gravel she'd gathered earlier. The first trainee through had tripped on the wire and had gone sprawling back down into the gathering throng underneath, taking the snapped wire, gravel, sand and rock with them. The second wire saw shouts of anger turn into pained gurgling as the near invisible metal filament caught the unsuspecting victim in the upper torso/neck area. The third wire told Rose, who was still scrambling up the slope at that stage, that the others had gotten smart, sending scouts ahead to either find the traps for them or trip them before they could damage the main body of the party too badly. The sharp Twang of snapping wire told her that it had been noticed and cut through with a knife. Pity they didn't notice that she'd kept that particular wire tense with a rock suspended above the tripwire itself. The muffled _oomph_ and clonking of rock hitting floor told her that yes, that had been a good plan.

She made it out of the cave safely, avoiding the trigger tile at the mouth of the cave and sprinting straight for the second closest sand dune, which meant that she missed the remaining surprises she'd left behind. Hopefully they were as effect as she expected them to be. Snickering to herself, she made her way deeper into the artificial desert, hoping that the thin roll of tarp would be enough to give her shelter until the following night.

* * *

The roll of tarp had done a great job of sheltering her from the elements. She'd dug into the side of the dune, made herself a small cocoon out of the roll and climbed in just fine. Snug as a bug. In a tarp. Heh, she killed herself sometimes. As an added measure, she'd taken off her shirt and used it to cover her face while sleeping, hoping to keep any sand that came into her little nest out. That had been a brilliant idea as well; by the time she woke up, she was buried up to the waist in the uncomfortable granules that seeped in everywhere.

That was the good news. The bad news was that, by nightfall, she only had half a gourd's worth of water left. Turns out that, even buried under the sand, her little hidey hole had gotten insanely hot during the daytime. She'd started sweating profusely even as she snored herself happy. And that sweat, while it did evaporate in the heat, had nowhere to go thanks to the tarpaulin cocoon. Which meant that, while the outside world was hotter and drier than Hell, the inside was worse than the jungle arena in terms of both heat and humidity.

Long story short, Rose, upon waking up, felt thirstier than she'd had since the cupboard five years in the past. Thanks to _that_ little episode of her life, she'd developed a near crippling fear of going hungry or thirsty for any length of time, which is part of the reason why she'd taken two gourds instead of the usual one. One thing you never wanted to do in the desert is run out of water.

She'd learned in class that some of the district residents stuck in arid areas of Panem had evolved entire economies, entire cultures around the acquisition and retention of water in the Nevada desert. There was even one weird little tribe that made the trek from District Six to District Five for the sole purpose of acquiring water on the cheap and crossed the desert in special suits that allowed them to consume any moisture their bodies gave off.

The best answer to learning that there were people who willingly drank their own sweat had been along the lines of Yeurch when that idea got discussed in class. However, a single day in the open desert had a way of changing your mind when it came to such things, which is why Rose dearly wished that she could have brought one of those suits into the arena with her when she woke up.

She panicked at the signals she was getting from her body. The headache was back. The stomach cramps were back. The Cocoon was as dark and as sweaty as her close quarters fighting instructor's armpits. It was a hot, stinking version of the cupboard. For a brief moment, she thought herself back in that personal hell that had been her old life again and lost it. When she finally came to, she had drunken 75 percent of her water rations that were meant to last for two days, was losing energy due to crying and hyperventilation and was starting to shiver as the temperatures started to drop to below freezing under the cold night sky.

She groaned. It seemed that the only way forward for her was to go back to the cave system and resupply. She needed water. She needed food, which had been ditched for the extra gourd since, well, she'd survived longer than two days without anything to eat, a mistake of epic proportions as her stomach growled about as loud as a forest cat now. A few more clothes would have been nice. Come to think of it, she needed _everything. _Seemed like there was nothing for it but to find some other trainee, knock them out and steal their stuff.

She crawled out of her nest, rolled up the tarp and stashed it in her bag before cleaning her glasses agains sand-caked trousers. She looked like one of those cartoon mud monsters some of the other trainee kids watched shows about in her year's mess hall. Growling to herself, she put her shirt-mask back on, shivered in the encroaching cold and made her way to the tallest spire of jagged rock piercing out towards the top of the dome.

Which was when she started to feel the sand vibrating slightly beneath her feet. That was bad.

She started running, momentarily forgetting that sprinting in the sand was both pointless and incredibly tiring as she tried to outrun whatever it was that was causing the sand to beat like a drum. She measured herself as the fear overtook her flight instinct, weaving out of the path of the vibrations and avoiding having to scramble to the top of a dune to get to the other side. She set her brain to work out the problem.

It seemed that the vibrations, while they were spread out across a large area, tended to be pointed in one direction. Also, when she turned away from the vibration, it would take a few seconds for the more intense drumming to catch up to her. She remembered some of the stories about submarines and how they used Sonar in a similar manner. So, whatever it was, it used sonar to find something scurrying on the surface and oriented itself so that it could face them head-on, which implied a straight-ahead attack vector. Therefore, as long as she avoided the strongest vibrations coming from the sand, she presumably could delay the attack strike just long enough to reach solid ground. She prayed that, whatever it was, it did not hunt on rocky land.

She spent an hour dodging the sonar, bobbing and weaving between the smaller dunes and studiously avoiding having to go around the bigger ones. Being underground, whatever was coming after her had the advantage of not having to bypass these obstacles, meaning that she was steadily losing ground to that thing even as a cave entrance drew tantalisingly close.

She reached Rocky soil in a whoosh of released air, sucking deep breaths into her sweating body as she slowly approached the entrance. Squinting in a dark the artificial moonlight was too dim to pierce completely, the girl drew a glowstick. Which is when whatever was chasing her washed up on rocky land. She gasped and turned around, looking at the thing that had blown out of the sand and was now steadily pawing towards her. She recognised that thing now; it was a Sand Shark, a genetically engineered monster amalgamation from the Dark Days.

Those things were set loose in arid environments to seek out and kill anyone trying to cross such areas. They were specifically designed for interdiction purposes, bred to seek out desert-dwellers and kill them in the most painful and horrifying manner possible. When the Rebels tried to cross the arid plains and set up a defensive line on the other side, their entire expeditionary force disappeared into the shifting sands underfoot. A massive release of Sand Sharks was to blame.

They could burrow through sand, mud and even swampland when needed. They had a massive pulmonary network, lungs whose connections could change on the fly to reflect their current hunting environment. Their mouths instinctively configured themselves as well, able to change from nothing more than a sand-propelled jet engine intake to a maw capable of shredding a truck in seconds. Their brains contained a highly sophisticated toolchain that could locate and hunt down any target walking on the sand within a range of two kilometres. Smart, adaptable, sophisticated. Deadly. They were supposed to be extinct, eradicated by a lack of food and pre-programmed infertility. But here she was, watching one of the massive beasts come ever closer to her, its legs gleaming with chitinous armour and claws used to smash through solid rock making a _click, click_ noise every time the beast moved.

Thinking quickly, Rose cracked the glowstick open as the beast's movements started to smooth out, indicating that reconfiguration time was officially over. She then ran pell mell for the opening behind her, her fearful breathing and whimpering being slowly overshadowed by the grunt of a beast picking up speed for its final charge. At the last moment, she threw herself to the side, feeling the wake of the thing barging through the space her torso had been in a second beforehand. Still, her shoulder got clipped by one of the beast's massive fangs, her shocked cry of pain echoing through the arena.

The pain and the slick feeling of blood starting to pool underneath her clothes told her everything she needed to know about the wound she was now sporting. She lifted the glowstick up in front of her... and saw the Sand Shark flinch back from the light. The squeaky 'whoa' that escaped her at finally seeing the enormous insect made it squeal in pain. Of course! That was one weakness that every ultra-sensitive monster shared; sensitivity. The Sand Shark was only ever meant as a nocturnal predator, with extremely sharp hearing and a kind of eyesight that allowed it to navigate pitch black terrain without giving itself away too fast. This left it susceptible to high-pitched sounds. The glowstick in her hand probably blazed like a miniature sun in its brain. This gave her a plan, a very simple and dumb one, but a plan nonetheless. She waved the glowstick around in her hand and screamed her head off.

The creature gave slight moans of pain at the high-pitched thing that was waving a pain source around in front of its face. It could not attack the source of the sound without getting a faceful of light for its efforts. It didn't know where the source of light was coming from, so it couldn't extinguish that either. It was simply too young to overcome such an enemy. It bolted back for its grainy home, reconfiguring its body even as its legs picked up the speed needed to get away from the thing.

Rose slumped down onto the ground in relief. Now _that_ had been a lucky break. She wasn't sure if she would get out of another encounter like that alive. Maybe. Maybe not. Luck played an important part in her survival this early into her stay at the academy, which pissed her off no end. The thing about luck is that it, too, tended to follow the basic tenet of the Murphyist Faith: anything that can go wrong, _will_ go wrong. Indeed, it even made the Heretic's addendum possible: anything that cannot go wrong, does.

It was her job to minimise the risks she took since, one day, luck would go the other way and she would end up as something's lunch... or a casualty in the arena. Even at the age of ten, this basic rule had been drummed into her again and again; one day, your luck will run out. On that day, the only thing between you and a painful death will be your skill and ability to get out of the situation. Nothing else. Never count on luck getting you anywhere.

Talking about luck, she had been giving anyone camped out on the crags a nice little song and dance number, which probably meant that she'd been spotted already. She sighed. She only had to survive another twelve hours. If the dome's timer wasn't glitching again. It wouldn't be the first time though.

* * *

The rest of her time had gone swimmingly. She'd evaded the others who'd come to check out what all the noise was about, stumbled upon a corpse in the room she'd set her traps up in the previous day (which, she realised a few days later, meant that she'd probably killed the boy), took all the stuff the others had left behind, refilled her gourd and gone spelunking up a different spire than the one she'd crawled down in. Her wound, despite being dressed with the change of clothing the corpse had left inside its rucksack, made her left shoulder simply too painful to use climbing up the first spire again. The other one, while slightly riskier to use due to the possibility of detection, spiralled up in a manageable incline. As long as she kept her right arm holding onto something and didn't jostle the left one too badly, she found that she made good time going upwards. She then found a nice little hole to hide in close to the Cornucopia and the final exit, which allowed her to catch some rest and listen to the conversation going on close by.

She almost pissed herself laughing. Seems like, after her little trap party, the factions within the hunting group had dissolved. While she'd been snoring her face off in the desert, these idiots had taken their training weapons and started fighting each other rather than going outside to look for her! Idiots. Nobody knew how Bren, which was apparently the name of the corpse she'd stumbled upon, had died, only that he'd come tumbling down the tunnel with half of his face caved in. Two others had gone missing when the battle had started moving into the smaller tunnels and at least one group was trapped by a cave-in. Huh. One dead, five possibles. This had definitely been an interesting weekend for Rose.

She kept watch until the voice of the instructor declared the weekend arena exercises over, leaving her free to escape that bloody desert and make her way back to her room. Seemed like luck was still on her side, then.

* * *

After her performance in the desert arena, things started to heat up for little Rose. Father Octavius and Mother Julia came to visit her after they heard of her injury before leaving on another dinner with the District Elders. President Snow sent her what can be best described as a 'get well-or else' card, leaving her to ponder as to whether or not he was joking. She usually found that 'grandpa' had an odd sense of humour and an unhealthy appreciation for the comedic value of intimidating people for no good reason.

And, the following week, her wondering about whether or not she'd actually killed the boy came to an end with a letter from the Academy's chief of Student Relations, congratulating her on her first kill and informing her that, as of yesterday, she was formally inducted into the accelerated Career Tribute program.

She'd come to expect such a letter. Everyone who survived to reach fifteen in the Academy tended to talk about it in hushed tones, that so-and-so got a letter congratulating them on killing such-and-such during their scheduled outings. It was an object of fear, really, for to receive a letter for killing a person meant that you instantly became the primary target for retribution by that person's friends. But it was also something that a lot of the kids would admit to wanting should you ask them about it. A kill meant that you were better than the other guy, faster, meaner, smarter or just plain stronger. Kills were rumoured to carry rewards for those that performed them, though nobody would admit to getting them. So she knew about them. Knew that, eventually, she'd get one for killing someone or that she'd end up being the subject of someone else's letter.

She just hadn't expected it so soon.

And the rumours were right, to an extent; her kill meant that she'd been put in the smart kids' program. She knew that she was getting decent enough grades to qualify for the purely academic side of the accelerated program. Seems that getting your first kill at the age of ten tended to bump you up into the physical side of things as well. This meant that she now had access to areas normally declared off-limits to second-years; the senior's library, advanced weapons training facilities and the technical training curriculum were now open to her.

What made her breath hitch was the list of responsibilities. Apparently, the accelerated career tribute program meant that she was now meant to act as a role model, the perfect example of what a career tribute was and what they did. Not only was she expected to get top marks for everything now, she was also expected to mentor a group of other youngsters in her age bracket. Youngsters who, by now, hated her with a passion bordering on extremism.

She was also expected to make a minimum of one kill a month starting next year. How she did it and where she did it was up to her. Why she did it wasn't. She either had to kill someone in the arena or kill them in a formal duel in front of students and faculty. She'd been to a few of those, the term vicious being far too lenient a description of just how violent things would get during such a match. She wouldn't be penalised for any kills made in self-defence outside of those instances, but wanton murder would see her stripped naked, flung into the most poisonous arena they could find and hunted down by a squad of upper-years. If she survived three days, she was pardoned. If she didn't, well that's just bad luck isn't it?

On the plus side, it meant that she could graduate before she hit fourteen. On the minus side, it made her a target for every single person looking to prove themselves or to seek revenge for killing their friends.

She hated this, but could see the advantages of graduating early. That much less time being around those who hated her for the name she bore. That much less time being shouted at by people who thought her an uppity princess that should have died long ago. That much more prepared for when she volunteered come her sixteenth year. It just meant that she had to survive the next three years.

Her last thought before slipping into bed that night was that she'd totally forgotten the name of the kid she'd killed with that trap of hers. She remembered the face, though. Kind of hard to forget a boy with half his face missing, his ruined head surrounded by a halo of dried blood on a sandy floor. It was a very long night.

* * *

She'd expected the added workload, of course. That had been nicely detailed by the letter and the instructors she'd talked to about what the ATP entailed. What she hadn't been expecting was the sudden increase in hostility towards her. It's not like it was immediately obvious just how it could increase either. She was a loner with a nasty reputation stemming mainly from her family name and conduct during training fights. The few that actually came up and interacted with her did so out of some sense of misplaced importance. They left fairly quickly after she disabused them of any notion of getting through the academy easily if they brown-nosed her into oblivion. Nobody got close to her or let her get close to them. Except during training exercises, of course. Though killings were still way rarer than they were amongst the older kids, she'd gotten caught out during arena sessions and beaten more than once. All in all, she was shunned, a loner among a group that was mainly made up of other loners.

It soon became obvious that what she'd experienced beforehand had been nothing compared to what her new social life was like. Indifference was replaced with hatred. Hatred was replaced with loathing. But the worst were the jealous ones. The kids that were more followers than anything else, the sycophants that had wanted to ride on Rose's coat-tails all the way to graduation and beyond now thought that she'd been lying when they'd talked and that she was being treated the way she was because of who her parents and grandparents were. They now did anything they could to undermine her, constantly trying to prank her, steal her stuff, provoke her into doing something stupid or even injure her before phys ed classes.

All that because they thought that Rose was having it easy, that she was coasting through class because the teachers treated her like a spoilt princess. Coming from those to whom the moniker 'teacher's pet' was a guiding fact of life rather than a source of derision, that was a bitter pill to swallow. She would gladly have swapped her position for that of one of those toadies. Friends, family and all you had to do was pander to some superficial Family brat two or three sessions a day? Count her in! Far better than being weighed up by every punk in the Academy every time you walked into a room.

Her parents helped a lot. Grandfather was Grandfather; openly derisive and deaf to her complaints, but he did go out of his way to praise her when she did something appropriately violent. But she seriously doubted she would have survived the first three months without their tacit support.

But there was trouble brewing.

In the aftermath of Rose's acceptance into the accelerated training program, outsiders started to take an interest in the goings-on at the academy. She was a media darling, her darling little face playing well with the news crews that came to check out the new face of the Snow family. The President's grand-daughter, accepted into a program that only the best of the best ever entered. One that virtually guaranteed her a spot in one of the upcoming Hunger Games. She was articulate, intelligent and just cheeky enough to be adorable. The public ate it up like it was going out of style.

And Rose was being blamed for it.

The Academy was largely closed off to outsiders. It relied on children volunteering to join the Academy, as having a large number of Orphans and a small number of Elites with nobody acting as a buffer between the two parties was a recipe for disaster.

In fact, District Five had encountered that exact problem about thirty years ago; a particularly brutal death of one of the Academy's most promising graduates in the Hunger Games had seen most of the normal District kids drop out of the program, leaving only the Elites, the Orphans and the completely crazy to interact with each other. All the Elites were dead by the end of the first trimester. The Academy closed its doors for good and District Five lost a large amount of prestige in the bargain. .

The spectre of that little SNAFU continued to haunt the remaining Academies. Public relations became a core competency for any aspiring Academy principal. Image management trumped any other consideration when dealing with Academy issues. All any outsider could see was the shiny beacon of awesomeness that only admitted the best of the best. Once inside, of course, the truth became apparent but, by then, the stigma of failing out of the Academy was so great that it would destroy whoever bugged out before graduation.

And the attention focused Rose's way meant that thirty years' worth of damage control was being jeopardised because the newsies had found themselves a little Panem Princess to focus on. It was all oh-so-sweet and incredibly nerve-wracking for the Academy's department heads.

Rose was not thrilled either. The attention directed her way was yet another unforeseen consequence of her admittance to the ATP, one that would have caused her to flat out refuse to join regardless of the consequences. However, the eyes of Panem were on her now. Grandfather had made it abundantly clear that he wouldn't tolerate any on-screen dramatics designed to turn away the reporters, as it would reflect badly on him. And with that little tiff going on between the President and the new head of the Dobna family, he simply couldn't risk giving his enemies any more ammunition than what was already lying around.

So Rose grit her teeth, bore it all with a smile and set about trying to survive the incredibly brutal training her instructors were forcing upon her.

There was little time to focus on how her classmates reacted to her admission to the ATP program and what the fallout of her little stint as the celebrity _du jour_ would be, which is why she ditched that consideration as quickly as she could and focused on her extra-curricular reading instead. She thought that the new wave of hatred and jealousy would be the end of that episode. Six months later, during her re-introduction to the arena training weekends, she found out just how wrong she was.

* * *

An ATP trainee was never trained with those within her age bracket. The best you could expect for was to be dumped in the arena with a group that were at least a year older than you, though most of the time the group was two or even three years older.

Rose, after six months intensive education and training, was at the level of a thirteen-year-old already. So, naturally, her instructors stuck her with a group of fifteen-year-old trainees. Who, it turned out, had seen the vids of her smiling for the cameras and were sick to death about hearing of this or that guy being mentioned as a potential match made in heaven. The opportunity to finally get the four-eyes off the stations and forget all about being mentioned as being part of a friendship circle with her and someone they knew was enough for the group to agree to kill her first before figuring out what to do for the next few days of arena time.

Monday morning, Rose was the only one to make it out. Her trainers were impressed, having watched footage of the battle to see how she was doing and to update the betting pool. The fight had been very different from the ones she'd been in before. The eleven-year-old was a great deal more vicious than she'd been in the desert Arena, using weapons and traps to great lethal effect. The Log Bomb had been of particular interest as well.

Rose was, apart from the trauma of having had to kill a large number of people, just grateful that the schmucks had tried to attack her in the Jungle arena. She absolutely loved fighting in lethal environments with lots of cover. A lot of the kids hadn't taken her seriously until they sported a broken appendage and enough wounds for any infection to be lethal. The few that had had decided to try and flush her out by burning the patch of forest she was supposed to be hiding in. The bow she'd lifted off one of the corpses had allowed her to engage them at range and set off booby traps from a distance too.

She hadn't gotten away unscathed though. A vicious swipe from a machete had almost cut her leg off at the calf muscle. A bit lower and she wouldn't have had enough muscle left to move. She was in extreme pain, but alive. Of course, the cut got infected by something quick and nasty on the day she was due to get out of the arena, which meant that she spent an additional five days in the infirmary after that.

Following her recovery, she spoke to some of the teachers about how the other kids saw her. The answer shocked the girl. She was eleven, but that had not stopped the gossip mongers in the school. There were allegations that she'd done things she didn't even understand, but was sure that they weren't good. The general consensus seemed to be that she allowed the staff to have their way with her for special privileges, that she used her name to get better grades, that she peddled drugs to the other kids... the list went on. And with each addition, she got angrier.

How _dared_ they? To spread such rumours about her, to undermine her abilities, to _dismiss _ her accomplishments when they _saw_ what she did on a regular basis... She sneered at the ceiling. They, whoever they were, had denied her her dues at every turn, denigrated her and sidelined her, hoping to make an easy kill later on.

She would show them who they were messing with. Oh yes, they would regret this.

* * *

Her plan was simple; she needed to focus on her training. But she couldn't do that without exposing herself to danger if she was constantly exhausted. One moment of inattention when she had so many enemies living in close proximity to her would mean her death. On the other hand, she couldn't simply kill those who had done this since, well, there were too many rumour-mongers out there to catch those responsible. So she couldn't kill them, incapacitating them would just make them more determined and leaving them alone meant dying a horrible death.

The answer was obvious. She needed to take over the student body and hamstring the bastards when she could.

She started with her classmates who, after hearing about her killing off a dozen of the best fighters in the Academy, tentatively latched onto the girl as a possible leader despite the many nasty rumours about her. Then, she expanded her reach in the dorms, using her new minions to quickly subdue the younger ones while she systematically beheaded the leadership of the older classes in the arena.

She sent Grandfather the severed heads of those she'd found started the rumours about her, with a plea to make them into trophies. He indulged her in that. The girl truly was taking after him to a most satisfying degree.

Rose then opened negotiations with the older elites by approaching those who had younger siblings under her yearmates' control. While pointing out that she couldn't kill the younger ones due to her being an ATP trainee, she could ask her minions to, ah, deal with it.

With the Elites agreeing to staying out of the way of her and hers, she pushed herself to mastering all aspects of training and education, often ending up with scores above the theoretical maximum awarded. Oh, it sometimes dipped when some of the dimmer minions tried to set themselves up as competition, but they never lasted very long. After all, the highest grades always belonged to her and her followers. If they ingratiated themselves with her, they got personalised training by her as part of her mentoring duties. Seeing a mediocre Orphan languish at the bottom of the class only to rocket to a position in the top 5 within a month showed just how effective she was, oh yes. And they'd do anything, _anything _to stay close to her, to reap the awards being in her good graces brought, to _live _just that tiny bit longer than those who had tried to resist only to end up dead in their bed or beheaded in the arena training areas.

During her third year, she finally had a strong enough power base amongst the students and the staff training her to ignore the 'no unwarranted killing' rule, effectively ending any further challenges to her surprise rise to power. Forcing the wannabe rebels to watch one of their own be slowly disembowelled by a media darling, in broad daylight, inside the administrative building's Atrium was probably the reason.

The heads of the Academy were left reeling when they were found out just what Rose Snow had done. Indeed, if there were ever any doubts as to whether or not Rose was Corolianus's granddaughter, seeing her dirty up the reception area and then smile her way out of the punishment was the point at which such doubts were put to rest. Her takeover was a _fait accompli_. And while Octavian had most definitely not been impressed, it seemed that both Julia and the Snow patriarch approved and so had wisely kept his silence.

And so Rose continued her training, keeping abreast of her workload and getting ever better with her weapons while all the advice and lessons Grandfather gave her helped keep her little fiefdom stable until graduation.

* * *

After receiving her Diploma of Academic Accomplishment, she put in a request to join a hunter-killer squad that was rounding up Dissidents outside the districts. The officers had grumbled about having a teenager join what amounted to a frontline combat/sometimes spec ops unit, but that had quickly disappeared beneath a slightly awed respect for Rose's skills and the fear of what any of the Snows would do to them if a bunch of their nominal social subordinates continued annoying them.

Needless to say, for her superior officers' quick thinking and performance managing Rose in the field, the man had been appointed as part of President Snow's personal guard squad. After all, she'd gotten so good at her job that if Rose ever came after him, Coro wanted someone who knew _exactly _what it would take to kill the girl before she got to him. And so it went for two years, pitting herself in battle against the toughest & most determined enemies of the state left within striking distance of the Districts.

And now, following two years of distinguished service fighting Barbarians, Dissidents and Terrorists in the woods around Panem, here they were back on campus.

"Are you ready for this?" He asked, clearly proud of the girl that carried his name now.

"Yes sir, Mister President, sir!" she exclaimed, the salute ruined by her cheeky little smirk as Julia and Octavian looked on. Huh, he probably would have shot her on the spot before she'd made him laugh at her Medal of High Merit Awards last year. Now he merely smiled at her antics. How strange.

"Well, if you're sure..." he shrugged. "Don't get too cocky. The Hunger Games have proven, time and again, that training and experience may work most of the time, but that you don't stand a chance in hell if you don't follow your instincts."

"Yes sir." She said, once more completely serious. He nodded, then grabbed the back of her head and brought her to eye level with him.

"And if you lose, I will erase you from history. Nobody will _ever _know your name, Lady Snow. You know I can do it." He hissed at her, smirking at her whimpering flinch. That was what she'd come to crave back at the Academy; the power her name would bring. The power she gave it. The fear it brought to her enemies.

Rose's actions on the battlefields no-one talks about in Panem made it clear that the secret to her success was that she always put everything on the line. To her, being remembered was more valuable than being alive, and her reaction confirmed that she understood his threat perfectly. "Ah, so now you understand." His smirk turned into a crazed grin at seeing her glare. "Ah ah ah now, fair warning is all I'll give you and I just did."

"Yes. Sir." Ah, but the grinding of teeth was music to his ears. He released her from his hold, letting her stand to attention again after re-adjusting her uniform.

"Now rein in that lip of yours, girl." Ah, that _delightful _flinch never gets old. "Save your energy for your prey." At her nod and slightly relaxed shoulders, he clapped his hands together. "Excellent! Now go in there and show the world what it means to be a Snow. You know the consequences of failure girl, now get to it. And may the odds ever be in your favour."

"Yes sir. And thank you... Gramps." And with that, she walked away, not seeing the look of shocked surprise on Octavian's face. "May the odds be in your favour as well." Was the last thing he heard before the doors closed on the strange girl.

"All rise." A roar of squeaking chairs and muffled curses followed that statement. The non-descript Capitol Celebrity stood there, all done up in what the currently trendy fashion designers thought looked pretty enough to go on camera. Instead, she looked more like one of those circus clowns to young Rose; all make up and strange shoes with little in the way of substance lurking beneath. That lady was a disgusting creature, made even more so in Rose's eyes at the idea that this was what the newsies had wanted to turn her into back before she enlisted. Rose wondered what the boys back at the barracks would be willing to pay for her, then dismissed the thought. They were too used to not paying for anything like that out in the Wilds. And, quite frankly, the wilds had better girls than that... _thing _strutting in front of the cameras right then. More sporting ones, at the very least. Still, maybe she could ask Grandfather for the use of her and a couple of other throwaway camera girls as a birthday present next year. The thought left her smiling in anticipation.

The clown in expensive clothing cleared her throat. "Dear students, may be the first to congratulate you on this day, the last day of Victorius, for having completed your final year here, at the District 1 tribute training centre-"

She stopped listening at that stage, merely nodding along in the right places while she drifted off into her own little world. After her class's graduation, she would be eligible for voluntary entry into the Hunger Games as befitted the top student in her class. And all would know her name.

* * *

Three hours later, a tired Rose Snow was sitting in the presidential ground car, staring out at the outer rim of the Capitol flashing by. A massive tent city had built up over the past few months, courtesy of Rose and her fellow HK troops raiding an almost intact small town that had been lost in the woods for years. There had been thousands living there when Rose abseiled into an important-looking structure and started rounding up and executing whoever she came across. It helped that she had a rough idea of what to expect, courtesy of her initial stay in the settlement a decade ago. Only a couple of hundred could have been left over from what she saw going into the suburbs. Say what you want about morality, but an HK squad is _thorough. _And the best thing, to her, is that most of the survivors would then come to Panem requesting citizenship! She still found it baffling. Panem troops had just killed everyone and everything they ever knew and now here they are, begging to be assigned to a district? What the hell? Though, come to think of it, why was she so surprised? When you got right down to it, that's what had happened to her as well.

If there was ever anything that proved her Grandfather's old adage about Might being right true, it was this. He was evil, he was immoral, heedless of the well-being of others and known to be a sadist without par in Panem, which was quite the achievement. But he was also her Grandfather and, for all his faults, he kept his promises and had come to treat her with respect. Loads better than what she had become accustomed to before... Anyway, no use thinking about Before. Nono, bad place Rose, baad place. No food, no water, no fun, no space. Think about other things...

She had graduated early and at the top of her class. She was the most succesful ATP in the program's history, with perfect marks across the board. She had earned herself a place in the history books alread. But she hadn't been chosen to participate in the next Hunger Games. Hadn't been given the chance to _prove herself _as quickly as she wanted to. She shrugged. Maybe a few more years taking out Barbarian settlements would do her some good. Maybe not. She was lucky to be here now. She was lucky to escape the Dark and the Damp, though she did spare a thought for the spiders she'd left behind. She just wished that it had not left her with so many unanswered questions.

She shuddered, her cheerful spirit broken by that one question she'd never dared to ask anyone, either Before or during her time in Panem. She thought about it, the question that she wanted an answer to so badly it _burned _sometimes. The emotions and thoughts behind it were complex (I mean, who thinks about green laser shows and insane laughter when dreaming about one's parents?), but the question itself was rather simple;

"I wonder who my parents were." Too late she realised she'd said it out loud. She looked around the car, half expecting a hidden murder machine to shank her in the kidneys or even a bomb to go off. She had seen more than a few of Grandfather's more interesting assassinations in person. Those never got old, but also warned her that she better be _damn_ careful about opening her mouth at the wrong time. She waited fifteen seconds before sighing in relief – and promptly disappearing with a CRACK.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore was an old, old man. Many would have said that he was past his prime, too far removed from his own experience with adolescence to be expected to understand the vagaries of youth nowadays. For all that, though, there was a reason why being a hundred and fifty had not impacted his career as a politician and part-time diplomat too badly. Simply put, he _looked _old. But that was it. Massive amounts of magical power and a judicious use of potions had done nothing to make the outside look better, but had kept him out of the retirement house for close to fifty years now. Inside, he had the muscle tone and healthy organs of a laid-back twenty year old; not perfect, but he'd take what he was given.

His hidden youth and vitality was nowhere near as obvious most of the time, except on special occasions such as the one he was currently presiding over. He grinned at the residents of the great hall.

"And I think that it's about time now..." He said, covertly hoping that those ministry idiots _hadn't _screwed the pooch again. Merlin, why had the Wizengamot elected to keep Cornelius in the drivers' seat for so long? It would be just like him to have the ceremony delayed by about a minute or so just to make a fool out of Dumbledore once again. May the gods have mercy on the man, but there were days where Albus wanted to team up with Lucius and turn the little rat into... well... a rat.

Finally! The first piece of paper fluttered downwards, its seemingly random vector pointed unerringly at the palm of his hand. He snatched it out of the air anyway, hoping to speed this up.

"Victor Krum!" the Durmstrang delegation erupted in cheers, clapping their comrade on the back as he walked down the aisle towards the head table. "Mister Krum, could you please proceed to the back room please?" The boy nodded, changing directions and making haste out of the room.

The second piece of paper came flying out of the Goblet as the door closed, Dumbledore snatching it out of the air once again.

"Cedric Diggory!" The Hufflepuff's reaction was... predictable, really. The whole house was known collectively as the House of Losers, and to have one of their own be declared the best representative of what Hogwarts had to offer was a powerful statement to the three other houses. And so the newly crowned King of the Badger House received his congratulations and sped off to the back room, eager to meet his competition.

The third and final piece came flying out.

"Fleur Delacour." Ah, a subdued reaction to their new champion. A few shook hands with her, congratulated her... but the vast majority of her colleagues just _glared _at her. He just shrugged it off as a French thing. Merlin knows they'd gotten better since his youth, but they still were a bunch of pretentious bastards whenever he had the misfortune of running into their ICW delegation. So much class, so little in the way of tact. How on Earth they got along with the myriad American governments was beyond him.

The blonde bombshell made her way to the backroom, her delicate derriere leaving Albus to ponder about whether he should look into making himself a bit younger at some stage. Ah, no matter. His little break from reality would soon be over. Back to the grind, as they say.

"Ah, now that the selections have been made, I believe that food will be arriving shortly. If you would please wait until after the feast before questioning the champions, it would be greatly -"

The Goblet flared once more, the eerie blue-red colour of the flames gaining a sickly emerald and grey colour. The ceiling flickered and the candles vanished, leaving the goblet as the only light source in the room. The fire fanned itself and blasted towards the ceiling, the flames bathing the whole room in a sickly green light that had many of the Blood War veterans instinctively ducking for cover.

In the meantime, the stupefied headmaster looked down into his hand, feeling a strange sensation there. It was a piece of paper. Staring at it stupidly for a moment, the name on the parchment-like material only registered as the flames when from an eerie green to an Aqua Blue.

Rose Potter.

He'd said that out loud? Why were they staring at him? Was this some kind of sick joke? He'd spent the better part of the last nine years looking for her, did whoever had done this really think it'd be this easy? Hell, the entire Wizarding world had looked for the ever-elusive Girl Who Lived for years! The cash bounty alone would be enough to set anyone up for life. Add in the expected titles... When he found the bastards that had hi-jacked this tournament and endangered the life of an innocent girl then, light-sided or not, he would take a _special _kind of joy in presiding over their execution.

"Rose Potter!"

Nobody said a word, horrified glances darting left and right, searching for the face, the scar, the _legend_. And still nothing came. The flames of the Goblet started to recede, candles appearing once more in their predetermined spots and the ceiling's enchantments returning to normal.

"ROSE POTTER!"

CRACK

A body appeared in thin air directly above the head table, crashing down _hard _on top of the enchanted Ebony surface. Not that that stopped the body from reacting ever so suddenly. Whoever it was, they'd ducked underneath the table before anyone else in the room could blink, coming up behind Albus and putting a knife to his throat so fast, nobody else had even moved. Oh, a complete unknown now held a knife to his throat. How nostalgic. It was like he was fifty all over again.

* * *

"Old man." a young female voice asked in a panicked voice. "What the fuck am I doing here?"

"Rose Potter?" He breathed, not daring to hope, after all this time.

"That's Lady Snow to you, Barbarian. And s_hut the fuck up!_" She hissed, the knife digging ever deeper into the tender, tender skin above his carotid artery. "I asked you a question. Answer the fucking question, then we can play the 'I show you yours if you show me mine' game."

He looked down at the scrap of paper, marvelling at the irony of having the girl he'd long thought lost drop into his lap, almost literally at that, after so long only to be killed by said girl once he told her about this. "Well, Lady Snow... It seems that you've been selected to participate in the tri-wizard tournament." He closed his eyes, waiting for the startled twitch that would end his life...

Only, the knife _loosened _its hold on his neck. "Is that so? And where are the two others that are chosen for this... tri-wizard tournament?"

"You are the fourth contestant, actually."

"What? But it's tri-wizard. _Tri_. As in three. Can you Barbarians actually count?" She asked, clearly amused about the whole thing.

"Trust me, nobody was more surprised than I when your name came out of the goblet."

"I bet." He could hear the cheerful tone coming out of her mouth, sounding strikingly like her mother at that point.

"Now, can we please adjourn to the anteroom? We both doubtlessly have some questions, which I won't be able to answer correctly if I have to watch my breathing as much as I currently am."

"Hah!" She withdrew the knife from his throat, making him and most others in the room (wands all pointed at him rather than at her, the stupid idiots) relax... until he felt the sharp pressure of a blade against his kidneys. "Lead the way. And oh," she said in a louder voice "if any of you fucks does anything stupid, then grandpa here is going to be spend the last minutes of his miserable life trying to keep his guts from falling out through a hole in the back. Is. That. Clear?"

Well, Dumbledore thought, she sure knew how to handle a crowd. The old man chuckled. This would be a challenge, probably one worthy of his genius. Then again, maybe he shouldn't tempt fate too much, given his track record these days.

"And by the way, the name's Snow. Rose Snow."

* * *

Little Rose Snow sat at the table, clearly stunned at the things she was learning. The other officials just looked on in disbelief at the fact that their supposed Hero knew _nothing _about magic, _nothing _about the wizarding world and _nothing _at all about her heritage. This was a disaster!

"Magic exists. Well shit." she stated. It was kinda hard to ignore that _something _was going on when one of the most heavily scarred people she had ever seen turned the chair you were sitting on into a pony. Of course, said person had almost been killed when she drew and threw a dagger at him, but the old man had had the foresight to deflect the projectile into the ceiling and call in the school nurse for later. Rose hadn't missed the implications of being given immunity from prosecution for justifiable actions taken during the tournament, no matter how stunned she was. What it translated to was being allowed to kill anyone who gave her any lip during the whole of this year. Power of life or death over a bunch of teenagers. Ah, it was like she was back at the Academy again. And the headmaster looked like he hadn't missed the grin on the girl's face either.

"Indeed." The old man said, eyeing his awesome-looking wand in puzzlement. What was the big deal with that, anyway? So it didn't work once or twice, so what? "Say Rose, can you please hold this wand for me?"

"What?" Was the old bastard using slang for something?

"The wand." He said, waving it around in mid-air. "Can you just hold it for a second, please?" She just nodded, clearly skeptical about why this man was handing his weapon to her. But she put that aside and reached for the length of darkened wood.

The feeling the wand gave her was... _orgasmic_. It felt like her body was on fire! She was vaguely aware of the world around her, but not so much that she noticed her skin glowing a deep emerald green while her body convulsed at the sheer amount of _power_, pure, unrestrained _power_, coursing through her veins. Then, it stopped just as suddenly as it started, leaving her panting, gasping, aching for _more_. More _power_. More _control_. "More knowledge." She whispered, the stick (no, _wand_) in her hands responding on its own. She didn't even see her own hand, still clenched around the wand, shoot up at her head at snakelike speeds. The tip of the wand reached the small, barely visible scar sitting on her forehead and_pushed _through the skin. A roiling wave of black pus squirted out from the scar, covering her face as she screamed in incredible _pain_. And then she knew no more.

The other people in the room, having just sat through what could be best described as a one and a half minute trip through insanity land that ended with this strange Girl-Who-Lived impaling her scar on the headmaster's wand (who, by the by, had fainted by that point as well) and then passing out after screaming bloody murder, just stared at the two people lying on the floor, one covered in blood while the other was covered in robes. At least, until Poppy Pomphrey finally arrived

"What in the name of Hades is going on in here?" The irate nurse exclaimed as she dashed towards the two unconscious people on the floor.

"I have no fucking clue." Barthemius Crouch said, still eyeing the dagger embedded in the ceiling. The others in the room silently agreed with him. This whole event was turning out to be too weird for words.

* * *

A/N: There you go! Complete intro of Rose's life from discovery by Corolianus to return in one chapter! One fucking long one, but it still technically qualifies as being a chapter rather than a book in its own right. Now I can finally get some sleep.


	3. Rude awakenings

Rude Awakenings.

A/N: _**Exposition! Because you know you love it! No, but seriously, this sets up the next arc of the storyline so that we can jump straight to the Dragon next. Took a while to write from scratch, what with all the bullsh-ahem, dramatic intrigue that has to be included, but I hope the character development makes up for it. Oh, and whoever guesses who the cameo at the start of the chapter is, gets to propose a name that will be included in the story later. And no, I am **_**not**_** crossing this story with the Cameo's universe. Adding Angst to a world that's about to go about as tits-up as you can get without turning the British Isles into a bizarre amalgamation of Eritrea, Yemen and Afghanistan would just be silly.**_

* * *

"Ha ha, very good little one!"

Rose's brain hurts. To be fair, _everything _hurts, but her head is the one that she's aware of. It was kind of hard not to focus on that when you could count every fold in your brain just by which bits wanted to make you scream.

"You definitely surprised me on that one" a voice, faint, melodic, told her. Rose went through the standard wake-up limb check, twitching each appendage in sync to determine what bits of her were broken, cut off, holed through or worse. Satisfied with the fact that she was only sporting a heavy bruise or two, she then proceeded to open her eyes.

Huh. She was in what, at first glance, looked like hell. She was surrounded by ruins. The gutted skeletons of skyscrapers loomed in the far distance, with the mounds of rubble closest to her being completely overrun with an evil-looking black moss. Glass, vehicles, plastics, bones, everything was old, broken, dead and strewn across the place. But that wasn't what one noticed first when looking at the ground. The two-three centimetre high tide of blood covering the floor was. _What the? _"Blood?" She croaked, her voice quieted by her wanting to not trigger the pain in her vocal cords.

"Oh, noticed that, did you? Everyone does." The voice said, forcing Rose to fumble around for her glasses as she tried squinting at the source of the sound. "Here, by the way." It said, handing her her specs. Rose put them on and took a closer look at the woman in front of her. Alabaster pale skin, blue hair, red eyes, petite bod, stark naked... Rose let out a small _huh_ before focusing back on the girl's face. Well, at least she knew that blue was the lady's natural hair colour.

"I'm sorry ma'am, but I have to ask this; have I gone nuts? I mean, I get abducted by a teleporting magical cup, surrounded by people with the worst taste in clothes I've seen outside of a Capitol TV studio and am given a wand that had me so high on crazy that I seem to have passed out. And now I'm... here and am talking to... you." She said, waving at the woman in front of her. "I mean, i've never heard of a flood of blood and I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't go walking through one without shoes on. Or pants. Hell, underpants should have been a given here, but-"

"Enough." the lady said quietly. "No, you are not insane. At least, you are just as insane now as you were before your graduation ceremony. And secondly, yes, I would not advise mortals to go walking through a town drowning in blood without protection. But!" At this, she pointed at herself whilst smiling. "I am not mortal. So I can dress however I like and never die. So there." And with that, she jabbed a finger into Rose's shoulder, eliciting a growl from the girl.

"Immortal, huh? Heard that one before."

"Oh no, I am most definitely not immortal. I can still die, it's just that I get to say when rather than having that choice taken away from me."

"But you just said that you were immortal."

"No, I said I wasn't mortal. That doesn't mean that I can't die. It's just... a more flexible kind of mortality than most get to enjoy, is all." She sighed. "Look, don't go around worrying your squishy little meat brain about it, alright? Let's just say that I am a higher being you cannot kill and leave it at that." The lady chuckled at Rose's expression. "_Immortal huh?_" She said in a fake tough guy tone before snorting. "Please, I've heard more ominous from people and things far dumber than you. You can do better. And that, in fact, is why I'm here."

Rose blinked. "Huh?"

The lady frowned. "Right. Guess this is all a bit of a shock to you then. Look, when you took the wand back there, what you were doing was accepting a bond with an incredibly powerful magical artifact. You're the first that this wand has done this with since its original owner and it's a bond that can only be undone by destroying your soul. _So,_ since you were so eager to accept this bond, the wand decided to call upon its old owner and relay your demand with a little note saying 'do this for me please'. Well, that's not _quite_ accurate, but close enough for cosmological work. And, since you asked for knowledge, tada!" The naked, red-eyed bluenette with drying blood splashed up to her naked calves shouted out. "Here I am. Knowledge, just as you asked."

"Ooooh-kay!" Yes, Rose thought, she had clearly gone as bug-house nuts as her old minions had said she was. "Well, while it was nice talking to you, do you know the way out of this, uh, dump?"

"Oh, sure!" She said, before reciting a string of gibberish instructions that Rose simply could not follow at all. "Ah, sorry, didn't catch that? Guess it's because you don't have the _knowledge_ needed to get out of this, huh?" She then sighed and pouted at Rose with a definite 'spoilsport' vibe coming off her. "You're no fun. Look, you really aren't going crazy. For what it's worth, this is the point of convergence between your soul and the higher level Energy states of being mortals have taken to calling Magic. Pssht, as if you can boil down physical forces only attainable in dimensions your pitiful standard models can't even begin to guess at into a single bloody word, but anyway, this is where the, ah, magic happens, as it were. And I was called into being specifically to help impart knowledge unto you."

"Right." Rose nodded. Better to just follow whatever her new split personality aspect was going on about until she woke up and beat whoever had spiked her drugs of the medical variety with drugs of the fun variety into a weeping, twitching, pulpy mass. "And how do you plan on imparting that knowledge to me?"

The girl frowned and cupped her face in one of her dainty little arms. "Weeeell, I _could _just do the boring thing and spend the next ten years of your life forcing you to study in your sleep. Or we can go with the quick, dirty, painful and far more entertaining version. And, well, sorry but I am sooo not spending the next ten years haunting your conscience. I've seen what your meaty, squishy self thinks is a normal day and I really don't want to have a front row seat on one of your little adventures in massacre-land."

Rose paled in anger at the thing's words, but nodded nonetheless. It was an unforgiveable insult, but it also happened to be true.

The lady's smile returned. "Awesome! Glad to see some of those neurons of yours haven't short-circuited under the stress yet. Now look, this will hurt you and entertain me, so don't worry about screaming. Only I will get to laugh at your oh-so-delicious screams. Now _git_!" She roared, uppercutting little Rose so hard that the girl went flying into a far deeper pool of blood than the one she'd been standing in. And, as her scream of pain was drowned out by the crimson liquid suddenly seeping down her mouth and into her lungs, she had to say that the crazy thing's predictions of this hurting her a lot were spot on.

* * *

"I say that we kill her."

"Severus-"

"As soon as possible, Albus." The sallow Potions Master pressed on through his boss's objections. "Merlin knows, her putting a knife to the throat of the Supreme Mugwump counts as sufficient cause for having her executed." He finished quietly, his monotone pronouncement giving away just how badly shaken the Legilimens really was. Occlumency had a tendency to dull the display of emotions as the practitioner sidelined any potential backdoors a Mind reader could exploit to gain access to the deeper, more instinctual cortical functions. Killing someone with your mind was not an empty boast for a legilimens when they were capable of switching the 'breathing' function with the 'farting' function in the brain. And Severus was an unfortunately passionate man, a rare and short-lived breed of Mind Masters. For him to sound like a muggle automaton was a dead giveaway that he'd been seriously spooked by the Girl-Who-Lived's arrival.

A silence followed that statement, stretching itself over several minutes as the Headmaster pondered the Spymaster's implied report. Albus had no illusions as to just what made Snape toe the line he set the man. Severus had been openly derisive on the rare occasions Dumbledore or anyone else threatened him with Azkaban, stating quite clearly that he was due to end up there at some stage anyway. Ditto with murder threats from former colleagues who felt that he was coming far too close to betraying their cause for their comfort.

Mention Lily or Rose, on the other hand, and the man was putty in Albus's more than capable hands. A fact that, unbeknownst to anyone else, had him cackle madly in the dead of night. Here was a man proud and stupid enough to betray Voldemort at the height of the Dark Lord's powers, eating out of the old man's hand like a lost puppy. Yep, ole Albie still got it!

So if Severus Snape said that the daughter of Lily Evans-Potter was worth killing, he was effectively throwing away fifteen years of dedicated service, not to mention what the man saw as his belated shot at redemption. Snape had been convinced, by Dumbledore no less, that Rose was important enough to warrant protection. That Rose was his way of settling his debt to the only true, if slightly vindictive, friend he'd ever had. That Rose had to be kept alive no matter the consequences. That, indeed, _that_ consideration trumped all others, including swift justice for the Death Eater's victims.

Karkaroff's little act was enough for Dumbledore to put away those he considered to be the greatest danger to Rose after the war, though the savage glee he'd experienced at seeing that idiot Crouch's face after Junior got Azkabanned was a nice bonus indeed. Severus's case was bogged down in the courts, often surreptitiously shunted into the farthest-reaching backlog stacks Dumbledore could find. Until Lupin had come forward and proven the old dog's innocence thanks to a careful re-creation of the Godric's Hollow fidelius charm during the hunt for Rose, Dumbledore had manoeuvred Sirius Black's trial right to the bottom of the Wizengamot Session's priorities list for the better part of a decade. Black still hadn't forgiven him for that.

It was a pattern that repeated itself in thousands of little ways. He couldn't jail the Death Eaters without provoking them into rebelling. Indeed, if Tom hadn't been such a twit and allowed them to murder, rape and steal to their shrivelled, toxic little hearts' content, the assembled Death Eaters would have simply voted themselves into Government. That was probably what Tom had been trying for, too, and would have succeeded if it hadn't been for meddling old coots and nosy one-eyed dickheads with magical x-ray vision. With Tom at the helm, the Death Eaters had played at being Dark Wizards, killing for the sake of killing without stopping to think if there wasn't a more efficient way of doing things like, say, bribing their way into key controlling positions in the Ministry. But, cornered by the Law closing in, with everything to lose, Albus knew just what lengths purebloods in general and Dark Wizards in particular would go to to keep their position.

So legal eradication was out. A rebellion was expensive at the best of times and, with the number of Death Eaters with the keys to the Ministry in their clammy little hands, it would be a woefully short time before they were completely in charge of everything. Illegal eradication was out as well. For one thing, who could Albus trust to kill them all off and not turn around and do exactly what the Death Eaters intended to do in the first place, namely take over Magical Britain and use it as a springboard for invading other magical nations? Albus, never having had much of a stomach for assassination anyway, had shelved that one faster than he should have and spent many a Wizengamot session brushing the dust off such thoughts & calculating the total cost, in galleons, of killing every Death Eater stepping forward to denounce their country's erosion of traditional values & cultural integrity and how enslaving the mudbloods would solve all their muggle contamination woes.

No, Albus did none of these things, even if he fantasised more about those than he did about what Minerva's grandmother's tits had looked like back when the two of them had played quidditch together. The uniforms were far more liberal in his day... Wait, he was gay now. Gellert's abs had been quite firm too... mmmm.

He started drooling before getting back on track again. No, he settled on doing something less satisfying, too wimpy for his normal tastes but far more cost-effective in his opinion. He neutered the bastards. Their political, economic and social power structures were mercilessly demolished whenever and wherever Albus found a weakness. It was a ruinous enterprise, draining whatever was left of the Order of the Phoenix's war chest dry, but it did have the positive effect of driving the vast majority of Dark Families straight into the poorhouse. In fact, of all those that had explicitly supported Voldemort, only the Malfoys were still rich and powerful enough to influence matters decisively. However, watching Lucius fume as he compared his fortune to his wastrel of a grandfather, a man who loved gambling as much as he loved making bastards every time he whipped out his equipment, gave him joy in his supposedly old age.

Though it did satisfy the little vindictive urges to whip out his own wand (_dirty old man_, he thought to himself) and turn all those murdering assholes into mayflies, it was done for the same reason as everything else; the Greater Good. If it meant that his country recovered and went on to become stronger & more equal after the war, then he would endure the pleading eyes of those that had lost parents, siblings, husbands, wives and offspring when they came to ask for him to personally intervene and speed up this procedure or that trial evaluation meeting so that their dead could rest easy once and for all.

Hell, if it meant the ultimate defeat of Voldemort and the end of any chance of another Dark Lord rising in his wake, then he would gladly _Kedavra_ the lot of them and blame it on a bunch of half-blooded orphans, a tactic favoured by Phineas Nigellus Black during his Mugwump days. Of course, the sight of Phineas laughing in that mad way of his was often more than enough to prove his detractors right and probably question the timing of the combustion said to include the orphan culprits, which wasn't a mistake Dumbledore would make. But... no. No, he was trying to repent for what happened to Ariana, _not_ add to the tally of things he needed to repent for as much as was absolutely necessary.

Same with Snape. The man did what he did to redeem himself, though not for the Greater Good, but for Lily. Rose was Lily's daughter, therefore Snape would protect her with his and everyone else's life if need be. For him to come out and want to kill her meant that Rose was a danger to everything. If she was simply a danger to the faculty, the students or even the muggles of the world, Severus would have kept his mouth shut. What's one or two corpses to a Death Eater? If Rose did what she was supposed to and offed Tom, then both Snape and Albus would cheer her on even if she got tattoos, started calling herself Candy and took to wandering down Knockturn Alley in her underwear. What this plea said was that the Potions Master believed Rose was a threat to the memory of Lily, that his one true friend he'd loved with all his heart would forever be known as the mother of a monster, a woman who'd died so that something horrifying was allowed to live and would have been disgusted had she lived to see her daughter's actions.

Dumbledore relaxed and fixed Severus with a stare. "And pray tell, Severus, just why would I allow such a thing to happen?"

"She threatened you with a knife. She moved like a trained killer, and trust me when I say that she was well trained indeed. She has the Elder Wand. Said Elder Wand caused her to radiate magic like a beacon, a feat not even you are capable of, and only passed out when she put her wand up to her scar and seemed to _blow it up_. Her dress uniform includes three knives, a concealed pistol, a wallet full of muggle currency, identification neither me nor any of my contacts have ever seen and a swathe of medals for merit in combat. _Combat_, Albus. She is a trained killer who officially posesses two out of the three Deathly Hallows and has seen enough warfare to be decorated for actions in battle by the age of sixteen." He enunciated, carefully lifting a finger for every point made during his little speech. " Do tell me how she _isn't _Dark Lord material."

Albus sighed, fixing the tired-looking man with his patented 'me-the-old-man-is-disappointed-in-you-the-young-boy' stare. " Using that description, Severus, you would have to include me on that list of potential Dark Lords as well. Remember that I too was trained in the Arts of War and have utilised said training to the fullest extent on battlefields up and down the globe. Have you even thought about the fact that she may not be that dangerous? That her history as a soldier may be of help to our ultimate goals?" He let the silence linger for a bit. Good. Snape was listening, at least.

"Listen, you know as well as I do just how much of a chance our graduates have of surviving an encounter with a Death Eater Severus. I try oh so very _hard_ to find and keep good quality instructors, but that search has largely been in vain. The curse on the position has grown in power with each passing year, power fostered by the belief of the people in its existence. I never put you in that position, no matter how many times you asked for it, because you are worth more to me alive than dead and you know it."

Albus then leaned forward, deliberately opening his thoughts so that Snape could read his sincerity should he so desire. If you're faced with a Slytherin, when in doubt, go for honesty. They never expect it. "Rose may just be what we need to at least give our students a fighting chance if they are attacked. Her experience could prove invaluable to them and make the difference between life and death for Rose in the coming tournament. Hell, her background may well just provide her with the power the Dark Lord knows not."

The Potions Master wasn't buying it. The scowl breaking through the emotional suppression impressed and rather worried the Headmaster. Despite this being the default face of Severus Snape out in public, having that scowl appear on Severus when he'd almost completely shut down any subjective feelings whatsoever indicated that he was either on the verge of an apoplectic fit or of putting all that experience with Dark Magic to work hexing things and people with spells that should never be used outside of a laboratory of some sort.

He then snorted and stood up. "That's not the only reason, is it?"

"No" He admitted quietly. "The prophecy is clear on that much; she is the one that will end Riddle. To kill her before the prophecy is fulfilled..."

"I understand." Severus turned around and looked at all the portraits staring back at him, a forlorn look on his face as he finally dropped the emotional supression. Albus had rarely seen the man look as sad, hurt and lonely as he did today. "But my instinct tells me to be very careful around that girl. It tells me that she may well be worse than Voldemort. That instinct was only ever wrong twice, and while those two times cost me dearly, they didn't balance out the number of occasions on which my instincts saved my life. Personally, I hope that I am wrong and will continue to operate on that assumption for now. But if I am right, it may be too late to stop her should we let her loose now."

"It is for the Greater Good, my old friend. Either fortune favours us now, or it won't have mattered either way."

"... Good day, Headmaster." The surly Potions Professor said, making his way to the door.

In the meantime, Albus rifled through his drawer looking for that bottle of whisky he'd transfigured into a lemon drop packet. Spies. Always so bloody emotional, the lot of them. "'Nooo, mister Fleming, _of course_ writing a book about Secret Agents is okay!' Bloody bastards, bloody idiot, bloody prima donnas." He grumbled to himself.

Really, what he wouldn't give for a good old KGB officer to coerce into serving his interests again. Standards really have fallen if he had to put up with Mister Whiny Disgrace to Gothhood for his spying skills. Oh, he liked and respected the man, but he could be so bloody fucking stupid at times that it reminded him of Flashman. Shuddering, Albus stopped hunting for the glass and opted to drink from the bottle instead. Minerva would understand. And, if she didn't, mentioning her grandfather's name was sure to get her to join him anyway. It wasn't like there was anything important on his agenda today. Surely, Fudge could last an extra twelve hours in office without his help, right?

* * *

Poppy was a diligent and highly capable mediwitch, widely known for not taking any guff from her patients. She had treated countless children throughout her stint at Hogwarts, mastered the treatment of everything from broken bones to Ebola Atlantis and had only lost an even dozen patients in close to thirty years working in a place chock full with stupid people that had access to near godlike powers. Her secret for success, if she had any, was as simple as it was hard on her mental state; she cared. She cared if someone came in with a bump from having hit their head on a wooden beam somewhere. She cared if a patient had a cold. She cared if they were on their deathbed, laying there watching her at her wit's end, deciphering obscure medical books written in Latin in the search for long forgotten cures. She cared for muggleborns. She cared for Death Eaters. She just, well, cared for everyone.

And when it came to the girl, sitting on one of the beds completely unconscious, she cared for her too, same as everyone. So when she showed signs of waking up, Poppy hustled to her bedside as quickly as she could. She was thrilled when the girl started to stir and moan.

She was probably less thrilled that, upon touching the patient, said patient's hand snapped out and knocked her out cold.

Which is how Rose came to wake up with 70 kilos of unconscious magical nurse snoring away on her torso.

"Fuck." Rose said as she wiped sleep out of her eyes and grabbed her new wand. "I need coffee." Squinting down at the figure still snoring away on her stomach, Rose unconsciously _accio_ed her glasses to herself, levitated the witch onto another bed and stood up, eyeing her new wand with curiosity. The freaky naked lady thing had not said anything about learning any spells, but, with a bit of mildly painful digging through her hind-brain, she found a whole new cache of memories that she hadn't passed out on the floor with. When she tried to access them, all she got was a picture of a completely white landscape with a hiss of static for background noise. Seemed that she wasn't yet deemed ready to access them. Or maybe they were meant to 'integrate' with her other memories. Or that strange lady was more of a dick than previously suspected.

Oh, well. Something to ponder later.

The place she found herself in was interesting. Even in her sleepy, cranky, half-awake state she noted the walls fashioned out of heavy-looking stone and wood, admiring the dungeon-y look it gave the structure she was in. She found her clothes sitting on top of an office table of some sort, though everything but her gun wasn't anywhere nearby. She mourned the loss of her knives and three extra clips of ammo that had come with her during yesterday's teleportation session, nervously wondering where the closest supply hub that would take her ID badge as something other than an invitation to execute her for espionnage was. Still, she would figure out the details after tracking down whatever wake-up beverage the locals had on tap.

Right. Slightly frumpled dress uniform, check. Magical crazy stick, check. Concealed pistol, check. Boots... ugh, check. They were covered in some sort of black gunk. Eh, she would clean them later. Right now, coffee beckoned.

The infirmary had been pretty much like any other. The words clean, tidy, neat and hella boring came to mind. The corridors weren't. It being fairly early in the morning, only a few of the more militant early birds could be seen drifting through the place, each stopping to gawk at the strange girl dressed in strange clothes that had caused yesterday's little drama. However, they weren't the source of buzzing conversation she'd expected. No, that distinction belonged to the huge number of displays that looked like the paintings back home. Hell, remove the fact that they talked with themselves, each other and random passers-by such as Rose and you would have mistaken them for portraits from home anyway.

Rose sighed, wondering whether leaving the infirmary this early in the morning had been a good idea. Then she thought about the medic that was not going to stay unconscious forever and reminded herself that cold stone corridors beat having to deal with pissed off doctors every day of the week.

Then she reached the staircase. The gigantic staircase with bits that moved. She shook herself. Nope, still moving. She looked up and gawked. How high did these stairs go? Was this some whacky construct in her mind, designed to keep her unaware of some accident or attack that had happened to her? Nevermind, she had to get down them if she wanted to find that place she'd briefly been in yesterday.

Rose silently followed a group of half-awake kids around, content to let them do the pathfinding for her until she arrived at a pair of absolutely _monstrous_ doors. She took a moment to admire them and glare at the strange statues that shifted a little mounted above the door's vault. Solid-looking wood run through with iron bands and nails, with strange scratchings barely concealed below the lock and hinges... each door was thicker than her outstretched hand could cover. What the hell kinda setup is that? It'd take at least two charges to breach this thing! Or, she thought as she checked out the walls on either side, she could simply blow two entrances on either side of them. Compared to the doors, the walls started to look flimsy. Alright Rose, food first, questions later. This was simply too goddamn whacky to be real.

The room on the other side was big. And open to the outside, if the lack of ceiling was any indication. No wait, hang on. She could clearly see the beams disappearing _behind_ the sky... ah, just a hologram then. The other odd thing was that there were four huge tables that dominated the room, tables that were far too big for the room. Why didn't they have narrower tables? Ah right, they're too long. But wait, what about magic? Freaky albino chick had given her access to enough memories to tell her that physical constraints such as the rules governing structural integrity simply didn't apply to these people. So why bother building it like that? Strange.

She sat down at a random table with few people around it and glanced up at the others busy enjoying their meal whilst pointedly ignoring her. She just shook her head and looked for the carafe of black sweetness. Seeing none, she groaned out loud. "Is coffee too much to ask for?" She mumbled to herself. _Pop!_ She fell off the bench she was sitting on, her head neatly connecting with the back of a boy that was sitting behind her. Ignoring the 'hey!' sent her way, she looked at a great big mug of piping hot coffee that had just popped into existence in front of her. "Apparently not. Thank you, weird magical coffee maker thingamajig. Hmm... Toast." _Pop!_ "Eggs." _Pop!_ "Uhh, _cooked _eggs, please?" _Pop!_ "Better. Bacon." _Pop!_ "Toasted friar's nuts." … _Pop? _" Uhh, not what I had in mind, but that'll do. Thanks!"

As Rose was eating, she chanced a glance around the table. At first she thought that the transvestites from yesterday were just a fluke of some kind but no, apparently everyone wore dresses in this place. And all her tablemates seemed to have a fetish for the colour green. Come to think of it, the other table was dominated by reds, another by blues and a small cluster of yellows were huddled together at the end of another table. Huh. Was this a class system of some kind? Back home, what clothes you were wearing was an automatic tell on your social status and general wealth. Suits, overcoats, skirts, they all told their own story about what a person did for a living and how good at it they were. Maybe these people were colour coded instead? She shook it off. More questions for later.

The coffee was good. As was the rest of breakfast. Rose stood up and went to one of the green-clad kids about her age. "You." She said, stopping behind one of the kids. "What's your name?"

The kid turned around, a glare on his face. He looked kinda cute, actually, the dark skin and blue eyes making an interesting mix. He held himself in the same way some of the Elites had back at the Academy too, a posture he pulled off quite nicely actually. "Blaise Zabini. And you're the girl that dropped from the sky yesterday. What's your name?"

"Rose. Rose Snow." She said, extending a hand in his direction. He just looked quizzically at it before looking up at her with a questioning from on his face. "Guess you don't shake hands here, then... No biggie. Look, I'm looking for someone to help me find my way around this place." She stated. "Know anyone who could help?"

"Hmm, let me think about that..." And then he got an evil smirk on his face. "I think I know _just _the girl." To drive this rude little mudblood bitch up the wall, he added to himself in the back of his mind. "Name's Hermione Granger. Frizzy brown hair, lotsa books, can't miss her." Not to mention that, when she gets going, the mudblood never shuts up. But he trusted that this Snow would find out soon enough. "Oh, and she'll be sitting over at the other table with the people dressed in red. They call themselves Gryffindors. Tata!" He said, waving her thanks off without looking back.

Daphne Greengrass looked up from her meal and eyed the stupid, stupid boy in front of her coldly. "Zabini, I have said on occasion that you were amongst the dumbest political geniuses I have ever met. Never, in all my years, would I have believed to see the day that you agreed with me on this." At his surprised look, Daphne just sighed. "_Think_, you berk." She ordered in that monotone she reserved for when she lectured people. "Yesterday, just before the girl appeared, what was it that the headmaster screamed out? Here's a hint; it was someone's name. Think, Zabini, back through the aeons to yesterday's entertainment. What was the name Dumbledore said just before the guest you so _expertly_ handed over to the Gryffindors just now appeared?"

"Rose Po-_No_!" He said, his smirk gone. "_No way_."

"Yes way." Greengrass smirked, even as little Astoria started snickering. "You just blew off the Girl-Who-Lived. I daresay that Madame Zabini is going to be _very _ disappointed when I tell her the news."

Merlin, Blaise thought. His mother was going to murder him. Possibly in the literal sense of the word if Rose ended up in a relationship with one of the Gryffs. She'd told him, since he was a tender little eleven-year-old, that the Girl-Who-Lived was sitting snugly at the top of her list of girls a Zabini was supposed to try and entice into a marriage with their family. The gain in status alone would see them taking over the Wizengamot and finally being in a position to toss the Malfoys into Azkaban for the murder of Blaise's uncle. If it came out that he'd somehow blown his chances at appeasing his mother's brother's restless soul due simply to an early morning _faux pas_, then he would undoubtedly be spending the rest of his life paying for it. But there was a way out of this. Unfortunately, it involved a deal with Daphne. He sighed, preparing himself for the inevitable. "Oh, I am sure that there is no need whatsoever for _that_, my dear. Why, such a message would doubtlessly overshadowed by better news... Something I could help along with, say?" He drawled, his carefully bored exterior causing Daphne to smile.

"Why, of course. Maybe something along the lines of, oh, how dear Draco has finally given up trying to claim _my sister_ as his own, perhaps. I am sure you can help in that regard." Oh, so that was the game. Zabini started to sweat. Somehow push the Malfoy eyes away from the youngest member of the Greengrass household, a feat that nothing short of murdering Draco in his sleep would accomplish, or face his mother with no time to adequately prepare his ground.

Blaise's skin prickled as he felt a cold knot of dread form in his stomach. What a fine morning this was turning out to be. He wondered, in the deep, dark recesses of his mind, just how hard it would be to off Draco. Certainly no harder than convincing any of the other girls in his year to go after the prat.

* * *

Hermione Granger was not what most people would expect. A lot of people expect a bookworm, a nerdish runt with no sense of style and a hairdo that simply begged for someone to run an electric current through it and see what happens. What most were wilfully blind about was the fact that A, she was a Gryffindor and B, she had been on the forefront of preventing five years' worth of disasters from killing off the entire school. In first year, Neville Longbottom had gone missing the night after the final exams. Hermione, just then recovering from being attacked by a troll, was the only one to notice. She gathered up the wonder twins Fred & George, who had taken to following her ever since Halloween, and went looking for the boy. Five hours later, she cast _wingardium leviosa _ and managed to toss her defence professor for the year, who just happened to be hosting the spirit of the Dark Lord Voldemort, into the blazing fire that barred entry to anyone and everyone. Neville, though a bit muddled in the head after the incident, was fine.

In the second year, she was petrified at Halloween. Neville Longbottom, with some help from Susan Bones and an odd Ravenclaw called Luna Lovegood, figured out that it was a Basilisk and, thanks to Myrtle's memories of what the odd hiss she'd heard sounded like, opened the door to the Chamber of Secrets. Granger only found out after the end of the year though, and spent her first month of summer holidays catching up. The second month was spent preparing for her third year. She never wanted to be caught out _ever again_.

Third year saw Dementors attacking the school. They'd somehow gotten loose from Azkaban and had made their way to Hogwarts, forcing Defence Professors Sirius Black and Remus Lupin to intervene. Remembering her first two years at the safest school on Earth, Hermione approached the two for lessons on using the Patronus charm. Soon, everyone in the school was learning it and while It took Granger the entire year to get it, she eventually did. Just in time to be attacked by Dementors during the final Quidditch match of the year.

Fourth year saw Dolores Umbridge take over the school. After the previous year, the Ministry started to question just what had caused the Dementors to converge on Hogwarts. An investigation was conducted and the blame was put on Dumbledore's handling of the wards. Apparently, one of the Dark Creature repelling wards was inverted, which led to the school lighting up like a beacon to the wardens of Azkaban. Albus was summarily dismissed and Umbridge took the helm. Which was also when a bunch of Dark Wizards went hunting for artifacts belonging to a boy called Tom Riddle.

Umbridge didn't believe a word of what Hermione said when she told the story of how she'd come across a bunch of people loitering in the seventh floor corridor, assigning her a date with a blood quill for her trouble. After the 'detention', Hermione pocketed the quill and accidentally set her desk on fire to cover it up, forwarding the evidence to Susan's aunt. The Aurors arrived the next day. Coincidentally, this had also been the day the Dark Wizards had chosen to raid both Hogwarts and Hogsmeade in their search for that bloke Riddle's artifacts. Which was when Hermione found herself fighting for her life yet again. She survived, though, and had had the opportunity to taunt the toad awhile before the Aurors carted the irate bitch-witch off to wherever, so the day was not a total bust.

Fifth year, nothing happened. This may _sound_ relaxing, but it's definitely not so for people who were used to waiting for the other shoe to drop. It was the most harrowing year of Hermione's student life at Hogwarts and saw her obsessively training and studying in order to prepare for whatever it was that would come at the end of the year. She was a nervous wreck by the time she boarded the train.

So yesterday came as a relief to her. A strange girl had dropped out of the sky under mysterious circumstances. Evil was afoot and plots were being hatched. And Hermione had the best sleep she'd had since Umbridge was sentenced to life in Azkaban. Which was why she was positively cheerful and happy when she plonked down at the Gryffindor table without a care in the world, not noticing who it was she'd chosen to sit next to.

"Excuse me, but you wouldn't be Hermione Granger by any chance, would you?"

Hermione stopped daydreaming and turned to look at the girl that had talked to her. A girl with black and red hair, dead green eyes hidden behind glasses (_oh god, those eyes!_) and a scar that was practically worshipped in the Wizarding World. The girl from yesterday. The girl who somehow knew her by name. _Fuck._

* * *

The girl next to her was weird. As in, way too weird. She looked like one of the brains that she'd know back at the school in District 1, before her Academy days. The plain, hard-working girl nobody really notices at all. But her instincts were telling Rose that this girl was more like the militia kids that would sign up every now and then. Hitting fourteen in a district without Career tributes meant that your chances of getting picked rose exponentially. A lot of them decided not to take chances and signed up for a year or two in the militia's infantry, thereby taking themselves out of the Games selection process entirely unless they volunteered on their return. They thought that, basically, a year or two in the infantry in exchange for immunity from selection wasn't a bad idea at all. What could possibly be worse than the one in twenty-four chance of survival in the Hunger Games?

They got the answer as soon as they were posted somewhere. Even at the best of times, the militia was charged with border patrol and what was officially called 'peace-keeping' missions. And there were a lot of bandits, bandits who raided the outer edges of Panem for supplies. They tended to be mean bastards, with access to weapons & equipment far beyond what happened to be the militia standard and had no hesitation whatsoever in killing anyone they came across. Put a bunch of fourteen-year-old kids in that kind of environment and what you get is a whole lot of corpses and a couple grizzled survivors.

And the ones who faced off against bandits were reckoned to be the lucky ones. Those sent off on 'peacekeeping' missions found out soon enough just what the militia did to people who lived outside of their designated Districts. The resistance was light enough, but suicide rates tended to run high amongst those who started out with these missions. They also tended to flip out at dead baby jokes, which made dinner in the mess hall all kinds of fun post-mission. Rose guessed that, once you've seen one of the officers decide to re-enact said dead baby jokes in real life before tossing them into the mass grave, you tended to not find those jokes to be as funny as before anymore. Didn't stop her from telling them, though.

Funny thing was, the militia's overall attrition rate hovered at around one out of every ten kids, which meant that the brats were _right_. A ten percent survival rate was loads better than the four-point-one-seven rates that were a constant in the games. This, surprisingly, didn't make them feel any better about shivering their asses off while waiting for a bunch of bandits with pre-War tanks to break through their buddies' defensive lines and tear the Base a new asshole or three.

Hermione looked like one of those kids. The kind that had that permanent _oh shit, this was a bad __idea_ look about them, who spent most of their time obsessively cleaning their rifles and other gear in the hopes that it didn't jam yet again when they faced the enemy. Rose couldn't relate at all, honestly. First, she was the designated scout, tasked with patrolling ahead of the actual patrol, alone, with nothing but her rifle and equipment for company. She'd faced off against traps, disarmed mines, disabled sentry bots, sprung ambushes and generally screwed with whatever game plan the other guy came up with. Second, it's what they'd signed up for. And they knew it.

Still, she sympathised. Even if it was a cold kind of sympathy, her job had been harder than theirs by choice after all, she could still see how these kids struggled through their new lives much like she'd done during ATP.

So that beckoned the question of just how the hell a fucking nerd in a fucking magic school that shat fucking rainbows and unicorns, if yesterday was to be believed, had gotten that same nervous vibe down she'd seen in combat vets? She was getting tired of having all these questions and no answers. It was really pissing her off. So she cleared her throat.

"Excuse me, but you wouldn't be Hermione Granger by any chance, would you?"

The girl turned to look at her and paled. Yeah, she'd seen the eyes first, then. Smart girl to go for the eyes.

"Y-yes." The girl struggled a bit with a squeak at the beginning there. "That's me. And you?"

"Rose Snow." She said, smiling a Corolianus Special at the girl. "I am very happy to meet you, Miss Granger. Very happy indeed." Yes, she _loved_ scaring the shit out of people.

END OF LINE

_A/N:**Hoped you liked it, because the next chapter's going to feature a **_**wild_ ride._**


	4. Interlude: Rose's first tour of duty

**A/N: So this chapter was meant to cover the time between the first day and the first task. Instead, my brain divided by zero and took a detour through Rose's past. Not exactly a flashback (or retcon for the more realistically inclined amongst you), but a general insight into the crapsack world Panem would be, given that it's pretty much a future that has more in common with a post-apocalyptic wasteland than anything else. But hey, who am I to complain? I get to flesh out Rose as a character, you get some insights into what goes in Rose's head (lucky you) and take a break from the standard boring bits preceding the first task. Plus, I have to come up with a good excuse for killing some characters off, which takes a while... Yeah, she could technically kill anyone impeding the completion of her tasks, so this counts as set-up of a sort. Seriously though, she's evil. She's going to kill people. Just not yet. So here you go, divergence where none of us, including my humbly omnipotent self, were expecting it. Enjoy.**

"So let me get this straight..." The green-eyed psycho sitting next to her said before staring at the far wall for a few moments. "In your first year, a troll makes its way into the school and kills the defense professor's teaching assistant. And it just so happens that the defense teacher hisself carried the remains of the magical version of a terrorist mastermind on the back of his skull, a guy who tried to kill you and yer friends at the end of the year."

Hermione nodded.

"Then, you have a giant snake invading the school for your second year." Rose sighed. "In your third year, you have what? Demons? Attack the entire school year round." Hermione nodded again. "In your fourth year, you get a, what did you call her, 'fascist bitch' as headmistress who spent most of her time torturing kids at random."

Hermione shivered, lifting her left hand to show faint scars that read _I shall not plan sedition_ in a nice cursive script.

"Awesome body art, by the way." Hermione just glared at her. "Moving on... then last year, nothing happened. At all."

"Nothing I _know of_. Nothing that's been reported. But I'm sure _something_ happened." the brunette insisted louder than she intended to.

"Now c'mon, ain't that a mite paranoid?"

"It's not paranoia, it's Bayesian statistics." Hermione huffed, her lips spreading into a reluctant and huffy smile.

"Right. And the old man said this place was the safest in all magical Britain. Sure it is." Rose shook her head as she kept playing with the steak knife as if it was her favourite plushy doll.

"Well, he's right in his own weird way." the girl admitted. "I mean, things have been bad, but no-one's died yet. And when you consider the fatality statistics amongst home-schooled wizards & witches, that is quite the achievement."

"Right. Fuck. And miss pale n blue agrees too." She sighed as she closed her eyes and held on to Dumbledore's old wand. It kept bugging Hermione, that wand. It looked familiar. She'd heard or read of it somewhere before. "You know" Rose said, "Maybe I should tell you one of my stories now."

"What stories?" The genius little Gryffindor asked, though Snow's smile made her regret asking even before she opened her mouth.

"So you guys think you had it tough, huh? Well, before I tell you, here's a little story that should clue you in. It all started during my first tour of duty out of training camp..."

* * *

Rose cursed under her breath as the ATV lurched off the rotting asphalt cover of a dead highway. She was incredibly uncomfortable, hunched in the ground car between the two heavy gunners and staring at a rookie that was even greener than her. The fact that said rookie just happened to be the squad's replacement CO was not inspiring her with any confidence at all.

Her and her team were due south to intercept a bandit column a drone had picked on long-range scan. Normally, the 15-man defense specialist team wouldn't go anywhere near the front line until some dumb bastard laid siege to a District settlement, but the bandit's numbers and use of horses had forced the militia's hand. They were headed for an abandoned outpost where they were expected to fort up and hold position until the rest of the unit got its ass into gear. Could someone say glorious last stand, please?

She fastened her helmet a bit more and checked her rifle again. She'd opted out of the standard battle rifle-pistol loadout, trading the chrome-plated piece of automatic crap for a semi-automatic rifle holding a 30-round box magazine filled with the old 7.62 rounds her arms instructor had raved on about at camp & a pistol that, while pretty damn clunky by itself, fired three round bursts and, above all else, remained silent even with the standard militia-issue rounds she'd gotten in her kit. That was the good news.

Bad news was that her team's corporal, upon seeing what she was packing, had up and volunteered her as the designated base scout. Dickhead.

"How much longer?" Someone screamed over the sound of the ground-car engine's tortured uphill revving.

"Almost there private. Keep your dick in your pants, why don'tcha?" Sarge replied in his normal, 'I-will-kick-your-ass-before-feeding-it-to-a-hellhound voice. The ATV started to slow from a vibrating vomitorium down to a lurching tin boat. "Alright bitches, I want a final gear check done in the next five. Snow and Tuchmann, take point and check the base. Everyone else, I want this piece of shit unloaded and fully camo'ed before we get gone in ten. Understood?"

"Yes sir." A chorus of voices answered back.

"What was that? I didn't hear a word you dickheads just said!"

"YES SARGE!"

"That's more like it! Get a move on! Private Snow, Private Tuchmann, off your ass and shimmy to the door NOW!"

"YESSIR" Rose answered, hooking on her backpack as she struggled to stay upright in the tumble dryer that was a groundcar.

"And a bit less of the smartass if you please, princesses! Now get gone!"

* * *

It was raining on the barren plains. A titanic battle forgotten by all but the nerdiest of pre-Dark historians had torn up the land here, leaving a scarred wound where a mighty forest once stood. Two specks could be seen moving away from a slightly larger blot, their advance hindered by the petrified hulks of dead trees and metallic debris whose function had been long since lost to time.

A few minutes into their advance, the two stopped and hunkered behind a rusting hulk. "It's freezing out here!" Tuchmann exclaimed, extending her hand to Snow. "Elizabeth."

"Rose." She shook the other girl's hand. "How do we do this?"

"Dunno." The other girl shrugged. "I've only been doing this for a few weeks, ya know."

"Fuck." Rose swore. "Right, the way I used to do it was to move around and then check out the target from the left side."

Tuchmann looked at her askance. "Really? Where the hell did you learn to do that? Kindergarten?"

"The Academy in District One." Rose said, shrugging off the age jab. "Never done it with a follower before."

"Wow, a dropout?"

"No, graduate."

"Sheeit girl. Really?" Elizabeth said, impressed. "What the fuck are you doing out in buttfuck nowhere then."

"Getting some life experience. Follow me and we'll do this right."

"Okay. Lead on, grad girl." The two moved out, fastening their packs as they went.

* * *

The base was not what you would call imposing from afar. It was little more than a bunch of boxes stacked next to each other surrounded by a mud embankment and, for some weird reason, a dried up moat. Where the hell the previous occupants had found enough water to keep it topped up mystified the two scouts as they looked through their field glasses.

"See anything?"

"Nah. Looks like it's clear. Check the surrounds."

"Right. Ambush?"

"Possibly. Got this gut feeling." Rose shrugged. "Never let me down before."

"Okay." Liz looked away from the compound and scanned the landscape through the rain. "Sweet fuck all so far. Phone it in."

Rose looked at her. "We aren't finished with the survey yet, though."

"Don't worry. My last scout partner always phoned it in early."

"Okay." Rose pulled out her comm beacon. No sense in arguing with the slightly more experienced rookie. "Scout two to group leader. Group leader, do you read?"

"Loud and clear, princess." a grainy voice came over the beacon. "What's up?"

"Looks clear so far. No contact or movement out here, sarge. Looks dead." Rose said as she scanned the area more intently. "Clear to move up as far as we're concerned."

"Right. Scouts, move up and secure base. Snow, Tuchmann, move out."

"Copy sarge. Moving out and securing base. Scout two out."

"Don't fucking die out there princess. If I get stuck sucking ass in the south, I'll raise your ugly face from the dead and kick it 'til you're not a virgin anymore. Do I make myself clear?"

Rose smiled. "Yessir. Over and out." She stashed the beacon back in its pocket. "Shit." She took one last look at the landscape around her. Broken stumps, blackened rubble, molten metal as far as the eye could see. A stray line of light crossed through the mists, briefly illuminating a hill in the distance. Ash covered everything, the fine particles long since baked into a layer of grey rock that choked the once lush topsoil. "Liz?" she asked, looking at her blonde companion. "Liz. Tuchmann."

"Huh?"

"You heard the man. We're moving."

Two specks moved across the desolate landscape, heading towards a ring of brown in the middle of a dead sea of grey.

* * *

You could say anything about the outside world, but you had to acknowledge that the world within the abandoned base was worse. Whatever happened there, however long ago it had been, the people who used to be there hadn't had time to clear out. The courtyard was strewn with human remains, bones jutting out of the ground at odd angles sharing space with rusted guns. The charnel house feel led to odd geometries all around, square buildings adorned with sharply jutting ribcages, pallets and boxes rotted through leaning against them. It felt more like an abandoned mausoleum than a nominally active military base.

Rose put on a gas mask, signalling Liz to follow suit before hitting her mask's comm button.

"Fuck me." a scared, husky voice came over the squad's commLAN. "What the fuck happened here?"

"Dunno. Looks like a gas attack." Another voice came through. "Snow, Sarge's three minutes out. Take Tuchmann and head for the CIC first."

"Roger that. Get that, Liz? Liz?" She turned around and checked on Tuchmann. The girl was fumbling with a wire. Broken connection then. She clapped her hands together, signalling for Liz to follow her lead.

The two headed deeper into the base, their boots crunching as they stepped on the buried skeletons underfoot. Their destination was a bulbous outgrowth in the centre of the camp, looking more like a mushroom than the box-like barracks they passed. No sound came over the aural interface, leaving the two scouts to simmer in the sounds of crunching and breathing they generated themselves.

The door to the CIC leant outwards, looking like it was either rotting off its hinges or had been blown open from the inside. Rose entered into the dark space of the circular chamber, a gimlet eye taking in the hulking machinery that may or may not still work when Sarge activated it. "There was a fight here." She reported as she passed her hand over the wall, the dust coating revealing bullet holes camouflaged by the grime. She spied a terminal near the main desk, its monitor shot through with a bullet but the desktop on the side was still pristine. A light blinked on and off on it. "Possible active terminal. Jackpot guys."

A jolt hit her from behind, causing Rose to bring her pistol up and point it behind her. Liz reared back, hands held up in fright. Snow lowers her pistol and takes her mask off, taking in the smell of mould, death and decay. "It's safe Tuchmann."

Liz takes her own mask off and grimaces at the putrid stench. "Dear god. It smells exactly as bad as I imagined it to."

"Yeah yeah. Check the equipment for damage. I'm off to greet Sarge."

"And why would I do that?"

"Because I haven't taken tech training yet. You probably haven't either, but I'm more likely to blow shit up than I am to do it right. That leaves you."

"Alright. But you so owe me a twinkie for this."

"Sure thing. Now git. The others aren't far behind now."

* * *

"Well well well. In all my years living in shitholes, I never thought that I'd end up here. This, ladies, is a PALACE! It's a HAVEN in the middle of this shit-blasted HELL!" The Sergeant bellowed to his minions. "Now sure, there'll be a bit of a cleanup for us, but that's what we're here for. Because we are the BEST Panem has to offer. The BADASSES come to save those District bitches from whoring themselves out to the SCUM whose asses we are gonna KICK straight back to the barrens. Can I hear a HELL YEAH?"

"Hell yeah!"

"I didn't hear you!"

"HELL YEAH SIR!"

"That's it! Now get moving! Scunner, Jeunesse, set up defensive positions. Harkness, Vergil, you're on barracks duty. Aurelius, Abhorsen, latrines – and don't let me catch you playing bonecards again you little bastards! Timochenko, Cori, I want that generator up and running before dark. Snow, Tuchmann, check the area for radiation pockets. I do NOT want to lose another dumbass because someone didn't bother to switch on their dosimeter. The rest of you, with me! I've got work for you."

Off to the side, the nominal commanding officer just nodded to Sarge, more interested in what the drone's feed was telling him than what his command was up to. Nobody looked in his direction except for Rose. The boy's hands were shaking.

* * *

It had been three days since the group had arrived at the boneyard. Fifteen people labouring tirelessly had made fair work of the corpses and debris left behind by whatever attack had killed them, but little else of note had happened since their arrival.

That is, until the sentries picked up a glint in the sky.

"Is it one of ours?"

"Bird's a neg on the transponder sir. Signal's pre-Dark Times too. Looks like an enemy bogy."

"Fuck. They've got a drone?"

"Good one too. Looks like an old P-38D."

"Missile capable?"

"Yeah, but this bird ain't packing. Coming up with zilch on radiation and chem trail analysis. Looks like she's scouting."

"... Get the Sarge in here. Things are about to go real bad."

* * *

"Snow!" The dulcet tones of Sarge in full combat mode shot through the musty interior of the barracks. "Get your ass in gear bitch."

"Yessir, right away sir." A rapidly waking Snow slurred out as she got out of bed. "Time for my shift sir?"

"Hell no. Cori just picked up an enemy drone on radar. Looks like playtime's over."

And, judging by what her watch was telling her, just two hours after conking off. "Fucking great." She intoned, dressing in her gear as quickly as she could. Picking up her rifle and loading it, she frowned at Sarge's expression. "So what's the plan?"

"Plan? Ha!" The mustachioed asshole-in-chief snorted. "We man a gun nest each and kiss our asses goodbye soldier. Nothin' else to it."

"Great. Tuchmann with me again?"

"Nah, she's off on a reccy. You get to pair up with the LT. Do me a favour and show him the ropes before I put a cap in his ass please. He's been pissing me off no end and you've got enough experience with dickheads to not do the same too quickly. I fucking hate rookie commanders. Think they know shit."

"And it's up to me to show him how little he knows? Thanks sarge, you're a real doll you are."

"Shut it private. You've killed enough little shits like him to know the score. Just make sure he doesn't end up breathing through his asshole and there'll be a promotion in the oh-so-distant future of tomorrow... IF he survives."

Well, it wasn't like she was doing anything else today. Except maybe shoot bandits. But hey, she wasn't that lucky, it seemed.

* * *

"Private Snow reporting for duty s-"

"Shh." The lieutenant hissed, one hand holding headphones to his head while the other cradled a datapad, his attention fixed on the blue-green screen's readout. "I'll be with you in a moment, Snow."

"Yes sir." She said and wandered over to the nest's main armament to check the ammo feed.

The main problem Panem had in relation to its militia was the very reason for the militia's existence; paranoia. Panem's peacekeeping force and mobile Army brigades were incredibly advanced and highly trained fighting units in their own right, but that also tended to limit their usefulness on 'peacekeeping' missions. Panem could not afford to risk the Districts getting their hands on large numbers of advanced weapons, which meant that neither of the regular forces were fielded in anything other than cases involving direct threats to Panem itself. Anything else fell under the responsibility of the militia.

However, Panem didn't want to turn the militia into a threat to the other branches of the military, so what the militiamen were armed with would have been familiar to any soldier from the early 21st century. Rifles, grenade launchers, tanks, LAVs, drones, they had them all. But these weapons had nothing on the stuff the regular units had access too and were all too often decades beyond their retirement date. The militia made up for it in sheer weight of numbers, but the tech disparity was often the root cause for the need for such numbers in the first place. Then again, it was familiar and, in the centuries since their introduction, the tactics that grew up around these weapons had become known to almost anyone who paid even the slightest bit of attention to military matters.

So it was that, in an age where orbital kinetic kill vehicles and plasma weaponry was old hat, Rose and her group were stuck fielding weapons that hadn't changed in centuries.

She sighed as she lifted the omni-launcher's ammo box off its railing and adjusted the feed mechanism. She'd played with toys that were more sophisticated than this when she was still in District school. Hell, her Tribute trainee bow was better engineered than this piece of crap. Still, it was all she had.

"You were saying, private Snow?"

"Sir, reporting for duty sir." She said, not glancing up from her checking of the trigger array. "Sergeant Hawthorne sends his regards and reports that all units will be battle-ready in five minutes sir."

"Good, good." The boy swallowed as he adjusted his glasses. "Private, have you ever been in combat before?"

"Does being involved in a life-or-death struggle against other tribute trainees count sir?"

"Ah-yes. Dropout then?"

"No sir. Graduate."

The lieutenant looked more relaxed all of a sudden. "Dear me. And how old were you when you graduated?"

"Fourteen sir." The only sound that could be heard was her hitting the barrel cooling system with her gloved fist. "Been a few months now."

"Ah. Good. Good. Any advice you could impart me private?"

Rose looked at her commanding officer. Her suddenly very young-looking and nervous commanding officer. "In my experience? Dodge the arrows, sir. They're a bitch to get out without killing yourself."

"That may be of limited use to us today private, haha. I daresay that dodging a bullet's a bit harder, heh."

"Dunno sir. Never been shot at with a gun sir."

"Ah." The lieutenant's hands shook visibly. "Well, I daresay that we're going to be learning new things together today."

Rose said nothing as she lifted the launcher back onto its tripod. They were dead. What else was new?

* * *

The rain started again. The defenders groaned as one. Defending a shitheap barely fit for temporary habitation was bad enough. Doing so when it was cold, wet and you couldn't see beyond the perimeter line without field glasses was jumping to the wrong side of miserable. Spotlights came online, searching the ground for any wannabe infiltrators. Rose chucked her vision sensors onto the ground. What with the heavy downpour and rising mists, neither IR or heat vision would do her any good for the time being.

The LT (_and what kind of name was Trop anyway?_) kept focusing on his pad, seemingly determined to escape the impending battle through the miracle of communications technology. Not that it would do him any good; escapism was not, in Rose's experience, conductive to survival. She doubted whether that lesson had been invalidated by her moving from the Arenas to an active battlefield. She just shook her head and kept watch, using her rifle's quick-mount scope as a mini-field glass.

Lieutenant Trop looked up from the pad in his hand. "Alright private, give me a sit-rep." He said nervously.

"Sir, no sight of the Bandits at this time sir. Automatic launcher is armed and ready, killbox is established and nest is secure sir."

"Give me an outline of the killbox private." Trop ordered as he moved next to her.

"Yes sir." Rose said, doing a quick scan of the area in front of her. "Farthest border is set at the perimeter line over there." She pointed at the area where the rusty remnants of a fence stood, barely noticeable in the moisture-induced haze. "South boundary is that outcropping over there." She moved her finger to the far left, her index coming to rest on a large pack of boulders. "North boundary is the old vehicle over there." She pointed right, drawing attention to the outline of another of this place's ubiquitous rusting hulks. "Border markers are there, there there and there." She quickly pointed to an odd variety of border markers that helped tell her how far away the enemy was; a deadened shrub at two hundred metres, a pack of rocks at one-fifty, a skeleton at a hundred metres and a pile of bricks at fifty.

"Good work private."

"Thank you sir-wait, I hear something." A distant rumble could be heard in the mists. An engine revved. "LT, why is the ATV active?"

Trop blanched. "That's not the ATV." He fumbled with his comm beacon until the whine of static died down. "Sergeant, we have contact. Unconfirmed as to number or type, but mechanical in nature. Ready the launchers. Pass spotlight control over to the gunners. They'll need to see what they're aiming at after all, haha."

"Confirmed sir, launchers armed and ready, spotlights slaved to launcher's targeting systems." The abnormally calm voice of Sarge reported before sighing. "Godspeed sir."

"Thank you sergeant. Stay safe out there." He was shaking violently now, his beacon dropping to the nest's dirt floor as he got himself back under control. After a brief interval, he finally bent and retrieved his beacon. "Right, Rose, you're on spotting duty. Find that vehicle and tell me where to fire."

"Yes sir." Rose intoned as she lifted her rifle up again, trying to ignore how her shaking hands made using the scope more difficult. If this was what she'd be like on her wedding night, then she'd gladly forgo marriage.

"I see something." a staticky voice announced over the com. "Actually, make that a lot of somethings. Jesus fuck Sarge, you getting this?"

"Indeed, you pussy. Stop sounding so damn scared and tell me what they're doing."

"Sir, they look like they're... shambling."

"God fucking damnit. Okay boys, the second anything, and I mean ANYTHING comes into view, you open fire right away." Sarge announced.

Trop blanched at the news. "LT? What's up?" Rose asked as she noticed the man move from relaxed to freaking out.

"Those aren't bandits, private." he whispered before gulping. "They're sporeheads. Fucking sporeheads. It wasn't a gas attack that killed these guys, it was a fungal agent."

"Fungal... Shit." Rose shouted, abandoning her lookout. Her pack, her pack, where was her fucking pack?

"What the hell do you think you're doing, private?" Trop asked as he frantically tried to align the launcher at extreme range.

"Gas masks, sir. I always pack two of them."

"Get back to your post! The fungus just needs skin contact to work. Your gas mask won't do shit."

"Can't hurt sir. Ah! Finally." She said, tossing her spare to the LT. "Heads up."

The dull thud of one of the launchers opening up could be heard. Rose just ignored it for now and frantically pulled her mask over her head. "Get your ass in gear Snow!" Trop shouted, having finally lost his temper. "If those fucks overrun us, it's game fucking over for the whole base. Do you understand?" She gave a thumbs up to show she'd heard him. "Then get to it already!"

She shimmied over to her spot, unclipping the scope from her rifle and aiming at the mist. The thudding doubled, then trebled as more sporeheads came into view on the other sections.

Figures started to coalesce in the rainy mist, their slow and hesitant gait belying the deadly cargo they carried. It wasn't just humans either; she could see large figures advancing between the shambling humans. Cordycepian agents didn't care what shape you came in. If your brain was big enough, it'd take it over.

"Sir," She said over the mask's CommLan. "You take care of the larger targets. Leave the human sporeheads to me."

"Got that, private. Now start fucking shooting before I throw you out into that moat."

"Yessir." She acknowledged, her rifle's shots echoing through the nest as the LT lined up a horse-shaped shadow in the mist.

The spotlight passed over the advancing human figures as the launcher prepared to fire. There wasn't really much that was left of the fungus's human hosts. The flesh had been eaten up from the inside out, leaving whatever skin had stuck to its frame the violent purple of recently dead tissue. The rest of the husk was covered in greyish moss, whatever defining characteristics that had been possessed by the infected probably still in the process of being devoured. The limbs' extremities were the worst affected with the hands being covered by a glove of white scales. It looked more like the husks were using tentacles instead of arms and legs now. And all that in three days. Rose would rather shoot herself than fall victim to that.

Trop's launcher opened up, the grenade splattering its target across the blasted landscape. Rose didn't care, lining up her sights on target after target. No matter how many she killed, though, she could see that the things were gaining ground despite the onslaught.

Then, all of a sudden, the mechanical noise increased. Rose's breath caught as she saw a new shadow coming over the hill in the distance. There was no mistaking what that fucker was. "TANK! There's a fucking tank out there!" She shouted.

The LT saw it too and immediately stopped firing. "Private, keep firing! AP grenades won't kill that fucking thing, but your bullets should be enough for anything else."

She obliged him, starting to open up on everything she could see that didn't have the angular shape of a Wartime monster. Where the hell had these guys found one of those?

The mist started to lift, allowing Rose to increase her range and finally see what she'd been shooting at without the spotlight. "The horses..." A voice whispered in horror. It was probably hers, but she wasn't sure. She fired at them, their dessicated bodies covered in a silver sheen making them easier to target than the other figures. Still, to see that they now had stalks instead of eyeballs and a black tongue dripping fluids as they advanced made her feel somewhat justified in her reaction.

The tank drifted out of the mist, seemingly gliding along as it moved into firing position. It ran over the infected on the way, their crunches sending sickening echoes around the base. Then, it stopped. A massive BOOM was heard.

"Shit! Abhorsen and Langmarsh are down! I repeat, we have people down here! What the-ah! BOOM"

Rose winced. That had been Scunner on the comms. Meant that Jeunesse had probably bought it too. "LT, any time now."

"Almost there private. Give me a minute."

BOOM. "We don't have a minute!"

"Right and-hah!" He shouted as the launcher readjusted itself. "Let's rock!" Jeez, one slightly pressured situation was all it took for rookie officers to drop their balls and lower their voice by an octave or two? Wonder why Sarge had such a hard time of it.

Rather than the dull thud given off by an AP round, the AT grenade gave off a Thud-WOOSH as its gyrojet system engaged. Trop sent the entire magazine down-range, the AT grenades hitting the tank in a steady staccato of explosions that seemed to feed off of each other. Everything else went silent as the fiery contrails sped across the open ground, the ultra-hot exhausts given off by the grenades enough to set one of the sporehorses on fire as it passed through the wake of the shell. The smoke from the explosions and subsequent fire ended up masking the vehicle.

"Yeah!" the LT yelled as Rose desperately tried to clear her ears. "Take that you motherfucker!"

The survivors on the line gave off a weak cheer as the stumbling firgures started to catch fire from the embers of their dying peers. Rose, meanwhile, struggled to reload the launcher as Trop checked the launcher for any damage inflicted by misfiring micro-rockets. "Hey el-tee, a little help over here!"

Trop sighed as he ran a hand over the outside of the launcher. "Can it private. Looks like we've got some deformation in the barrel lining. Grab the replacement, will you?"

"But we don't have any replacements here sir." Rose did not like this. There were two launchers on the line, one of which had doubtlessly been targeted by the tank in its first few shots. If this one was dead while the tank wasn't... "Sir, permission to speak freely sir?"

Trop's face was decidedly grim. "Go ahead."

"We can't stay in the dugout sir. You knocked that tank out good, but I'm not sure if it's a clean kill. It's one of the ones from before the Dark Days, see? Those things got nuked and still kept going after their crews were dead. So one rocket salvo? Not gonna do it. So we need to take this thing out before it starts up again and pastes the fuck out of us."

"Right. So what do you plan on doing about it private?"

Rose sighed. "Get the sarge on the horn sir. Someone needs to go out there and blow the shit out of this thing before the sucker's computers reboot. Sir."

Trop smiled at her. "Well summarised private. I'll just contact Hawthorne then."

Rose felt a shiver of unease crawl up her spine. Something was definitely not right. Her gut never lied.

* * *

The initial assault had failed. Whatever had caused those sporeheads to attack had not lasted long after the LT's time to shine. The rain seemed to have helped in that regard; normally, cordyceps victims would swarm in their hundreds, but only when it was dry and sunny. Made Rose wonder about where, exactly, the sporeheads took shelter. And just how those mythical bandits had coerced them into attacking their position in the first place. If the bandits hadn't all been caught by the infestation. Focus, Rose.

The one bit of bad news of the day was that Sarge had decided that Snow's call was a good one. More exactly, he'd told her that, quote, 'it was nice to know that that small rack of yours comes with some brains, private', unquote. And that, since the idea was Rose's in the first place, that she had volunteered to go blow up that 'stonking big piece of crap parked right in the middle of my fucking killbox'. So there she was, under the watchful eye of the whole outpost, loaded down with five kilos of solid-state explosive rope going off to silence the damn tank once and for all. She tightened her grip on her rifle. She'd come up with the idea. She shouldn't be the one that had to go out and pull it off. Life wasn't fair, ever.

She jumped out of the closest dugout, her eyes following the spotlight as she evaluated the terrain one last time. Dead sporeheads, check. Unexploded AP rounds, check. Fucking suspicious, probably sporeladen ground, check. Twitching corpses, thankful uncheck. Tank making slight grinding noises, check. She exhaled a slow breath as she targeted the corpses on the ground. She'd heard the stories about cordyceps victims before. Both father and grandfather had been adamant that, even if they look dead, they're probably just lying in wait. Coro had said something about them reminding him of a pini-ata, whatever the hell that was. She'd never really asked, writing it up to just yet another weird reference she could look up at her leisure later one. Still, she decided not to take chances.

Her rifle barked as she shot the closest corpse in the head. The corpse promptly inflated like a balloon before blowing up, releasing a spray of ooze that would have covered her if she'd been at close range. Eww. She now officially didn't want to know what a pini-ata was.

She repeated the process as she warily made her way to the deceptively still hulk, the spotlight helpfully illuminating anything within a dozen metres of her position. Eventually, she'd carved out an oozy path to the tank.

"Sarge, reporting that I'm at the tank and ready to lay out the charges sir. Need advice as to where and how to place them."

"Good work, private. Set them on either side of its treads."

Rose took a good look at the hulk she was eyeing from a metre away. "Beg your pardon sir, but I'm sorry to report that there are no, I repeat, no treads on this here machine sir."

The static on the end of the line seemed to grow louder as the silence continued. "Repeat that, private."

"No visible treads sir. Looks like this thing's a glider or, at least, one of those with the wheels inside the armour sir.."

"Sweet mother of crap." Sarge breathed into the line. "Alright private, next best thing you can do is stuff the lot down the gun barrel.

Stuff the what? Down the what? "Uh, you sure Sarge?"

"Princess, if you question me like that again, I'm gutting you, do you understand?"

"Yessir." Yeesh. That couldn't have come out fast enough.

"Now do as I say; go over to the tank's gun barrel and _stuff the explosives down the fucking thing. _You got that private?"

"Sir, yes sir. Moving now sir."

She shimmied over to the front of the monstrosity, trying very hard not to listen to the increased groaning noises coming from inside the tank. She uncoiled the explosive rope and quickly dashed up to the barrel of the tank. She started shoving in the whole lot before the distinctive whine of an activating point defence pod came online. No. She was half done. She _couldn't_ just let two kilos of explosive dangle outside the barrel. It'd likely kill her along with the tank if she did. Cursing as the whine grew louder, she stuffed the rest of the rope into the barrel and used her rifle to push it all further in. That done, she started to run.

Too late.

The point defence pod suddenly activated with a sizzle-CRACK. She fell forward, screaming as her left shoulder burned. Getting up, she sprinted back to the line, zig-zagging as best she could to avoid more of the crimson bolts heading her way. Finally, she made it to the trenches, dropping into the hole just as another bolt hit the far side of the moat.

The tank, in the meantime, had finished groaning and started revving whatever it had for engines right up until Trop squeezed the detonator. A muffled Boom could be heard as its main gun disintegrated, taking the front of the behemoth with it. There was absolute silence from the compound until Rose's pained voice came back on the ComLan.

"Fuck, ah fuck. Sir, request-requesting a medic here." She panted out as she checked her shoulder. "The bastard shot me clean through."

"Stow it Snow. There's no way I'm sending Dubois to get your sorry ass. Make like a bitch and crawl back if you have to."

"Aw, love you too Sarge."

"Just shut the fuck up and get back here."

* * *

"Rose."

"Liz."

"What're you in hospital for?"

"Tank. You?"

"Sporeheads."

"Fuck. Got bit?"

"Nah, one of 'em was carrying a grenade. Blew my leg off. You?"

"Laser nailed my shoulder."

"Sucks."

"Yeah."

"Fancy a game of bones?"

"More inclined to play a game of thrones, actually."

"Huh. Got the cards for it?"

"Sure."

* * *

"And that was my first week of frontline duty." Rose said, happily chewing a bacon sandwich as she tossed back her coffee. And just where had these barbarians found coffee? That stuff was rarer than Shadowhawk teeth.

Hermione and the entire Gryffindor table stared at the girl sitting with them.

"So." Dean Thomas asked, clearing his throat. "You're telling me that, in your first week as a soldier, you fought zombies and destroyed a sapient tank?"

"Yes, what? That was nothing. I've seen and done worse since."

"...You know, I think I like you." One of the other kids said.

Rose just stared at them for a second. "Thanks. I tend to have that effect on people."

* * *

**A/N: And there you have it. If you want to drop some ideas, post omakes or just make fools of yourselves on the internet (go ahead, no-one's judging you), just review and tell me please. Oh, and have fun, don't do anything that'll get you killed and - DO THE HARLEM SHAKE! WOOOP WOOOP WOOOP-etc.**


	5. Taking flight

**A/N: Okay, so here's the long-promised, highly anticipated chapter of The Snow Queen; the Dragon Fight. That's right, it's here and slightly modified to reflect the new aspects of the story. I am exhausted, been writing this thing non-stop all day. Enjoy it, kiddies. And as always, stay tuned.**

The grounds around Hogwarts were eerily silent for a warm November afternoon. The storms had let up somewhat, allowing a hint of blue to pierce through the white and grey clouds. You could see the Beauxbatons camp off in the distance, the majestic carriage surrounded by tents and banners looking like a palace lording it over the local slum. The ship from Durmstrang was moving across the lake, happily bobbing along as if there wasn't a curious giant squid feeling up the outer hull with its tentacles.

Most of the children were outside, enjoying the gap between the end of classes and dinnertime in their own ways. There was a chess match going on between Weasley and Goldstein, the Gryffindor Golden Boy and the Ravenclaw Overmind duking it out in an intense match-up that would determine the outcome for the October chess rankings.

The Slytherins and the Hufflepuffs were sitting together off to the side, attentions divided between the chess match to end all chess matches and the newly arrived exchange students. Durmstrang and Beauxbatons were lounging around and talking in different languages, their discussions about as easy to follow to the Hogwarts students as one of Babbling's treatises on the origins of Runic Sanskrit rituals.

But all of them were keeping a weary and slightly scandalised eye on the black-haired girl whirling around the grounds with a sword and the biggest grin anyone had yet seen on her.

Rose wasn't paying much attention to anything around her, losing herself in the combination of kicks, punches and sword thrusts she favoured during lone training sessions. She needed this. It had been a week since she'd had any kind of alone time, what with the incessant parties on offer to Capitol residents, that cute guy she'd picked up on leave and yesterday. Not that she would complain much about things. It had been a lot of fun for her. Hell, ever since she'd woken up this morning she'd been having tons of fun. Training drills from ten AM onwards, arranging to finally go shopping with the crazy cat lady (or was that Lion Lady?), doing some research on this tri-pussy tournament she'd been roped into and, finally, her little bit of alone time with a gladius she'd picked off one of the older armours whilst exploring the castle.

And what a castle it was. It had everything she'd expect from a frontier outpost with things to hide. Hard-to-navigate corridors, trick doors, trap doors, hidden floors... she'd almost forgotten her training regimen in her exploration. Hermione had given her a few quick pointers after breakfast before hopping off to classes, all of them incredibly unhelpful (What was a gryffin anyway? _Winged creature with the head of an eagle and the body of a great cat. You'll know one when you see one._Thanks for that Blue. How incredibly unhelpful of you. _I try._), but that was okay. The poor girl had no idea that she'd had no idea. Not to mention that she was incredibly nervous around Rose. So Snow decided to cut her some slack. The lack of directions was more than enticing anyway. But man, those stairways had been a surprise. Though not as big a surprise as when a group of kids no older than twelve had stumbled upon Rose hanging off a balustrade and shouting her love for stair-surfing out loud as the stairway whipped over to the other side of the room.

So she'd had her fun. Would do again later. But now it was sword practice time, so Rose had to shimmy. Doing sword drills by yourself quickly got boring though, so she'd focused and rushed through her two-hour drill for the day in one and a half hours and then gone to the lakeside to practice some more.

The gladius sung as it spun through the air, its ancient blade seemingly gleaming in the afternoon light. She'd trained with one throughout most of her time as a Tribute Trainee, its lighter blade and shorter reach forcing you to engage up close when you didn't have a shield handy. With a shield, disciplined drill manoeuvring gave you the advantage as you could easily get inside your opponent's guard if you did everything by the numbers. Without a shield, buckler or other form of deflective protection, you had to improvise. And Rose was nothing if not an inventive brawler when it came to wielding one of these short swords unshielded. She preferred to train with a target or sparring partner handy, but those were thin on the ground here unless she wanted to try outmanoeuvring that crazy war vet that handled defence against whatever (_the dark arts_. I know, thanks), which was not something she fancied doing until she'd worked out the kinks in her technique first.

So here she was, running through one of her former teacher's more inventive sword drills wearing nothing but boots, shorts and a tank top.

To the onlookers, she made quite a sight. This teenaged girl whirled the blade around as if she was born with one in her hand, ducking, kicking and punching unseen enemies just as if she was fighting off a demiguise hunting party. The male population appreciated the view greatly. It wasn't often that a witch, no matter her reputation, willingly bore that much skin in public. And she was pretty shapely for a girl. The muscles glistening with sweat were... appreciated. Even the Veela girl hadn't gotten such a reaction out of them when she'd first made her entrance.

The more observant portion of the crowd noticed something a bit more disturbing. Scars peeked out from under the tank top and ran down legs, arms and even came out from underneath the neck line. The face was fine, but the rest of her body had more in common with a terrain map than the body of a healthy human. What was even more disturbing were that one could recognise what had caused the scars. Her right hand, for example, bore the faint lines of deep wounds. Her left arm had a deep indentation on both sides, which some of the muggleborn recognised as an exit wound of some sort. Her legs were criss-crossed with faded white lines, some so deep they left a ridge in the muscle, others not. The back of her neck was the worst. It looked like an acid burn, but without the blemishing you expected to find there. It was simply a shallow pool of scar tissue masked under normal-looking skin.

A lot of the kids remembered the rumours about Rose fighting Inferi and cursed muggle devices and revised their opinions accordingly. Whatever she'd been fighting had left evidence up and down her body. You just had to look closely to see it.

The more medically inclined were horrified. How was the girl even walking? Some of those scars indicated wounds that could take out wizards and have them bed-ridden for months should they survive. And yet this girl, Girl-Who-Lived or not, was evidently able to recover from them as if nothing had happened. Just who was she? And how did she do it?

Many people puzzled over the enigma that was Rose Snow. Some over just how she would look like with even less clothes on, others about just what she'd done that had allowed her to live through such obvious trauma.

One of them set out to find some answers.

* * *

Rose's sixth sense started blaring at her. Someone had just snuck up into her training space. Going on instincts drilled into her both at the Academy and on the battlefields, she whirled around and prepared to thrust her blade into the dumbass's stomach. At least, that was the plan until a firm hand gripped her sword arm and pulled it aside. She kicked out with her foot, catching the potential enemy in the stomach.

Sword arm free once more, she brought the gladius back into thrusting postion and stopped as she noticed that the dumbass she'd almost run through was actually a student. From Durmstrang, if the uniform colours were right. Damn, but didn't it look half good on the guy too.

"Apologies for interrupting." The boy said gravely as he finished wheezing and picked himself back up. Wow. The guy was huge. And solemn. "My name is Viktor Krum. I vish to challenge you to a sparring match."

"What?" Rose asked. "That was a pretty stupid reason to get this close to a chick with a sword, you know."

"No, it vas ze best vay to get your attention. You vere distracted."

Rose snorted. "No shit." She looked closer at him. "A spar, huh? You don't exactly look like you're up to it yet. What with my foot getting comfy in your gut and all."

"Zat is not quite true. I vould be honored if you gave me zis opportunity to test my skills against you."

Snow nodded. "Rules?"

"No blades. No killing." Krum said, his expression not changing an iota as he sized her up.

"Aww, and I was starting to like you too." She mock-pouted at him. "Big man like yourself? Hate to break it to you, but that is not what they mean when they talk about hitting on girls."

Viktor looked puzzled. "Vat? Hitting on girls? Is zat slang for fighting?"

"No" she laughed, "most definitely not. It meanst asking a girl out."

"I still don't get it." He admitted sheepishly.

"Dating a girl." When in doubt, go for the deadpan.

"Ah! No, I don't vant to ask you out. I just vant to fight you for a round or two."

"Alright then. No blades. No killing." Rose shrugged as she tossed the gladius aside. "Guess you do something new every day."

"Vat? Fighting vizout blades?"

"No. Fighting without killing at the end." She said before kicking out.

Krum dodged under the haymaker before trying to grab her foot. She brought her foot down before he got into position, her heavy boot impacting his left wrist before planting into the soft grass. She then used the momentum to barge forward underneath his guard, her hand striking out into his unprotected groin.

"Oof!" He said before slamming both his fists into the middle of Rose's back, bringing her down with him.

The soft grass made for a nicer cushion than the usual fare she had to deal with when her face ended up hitting dirt. Grass stains were easier to deal with than bruises from landing on concrete. Rose was impressed. It was not often that she fought a man that could still think when his balls were sharing space with his tongue. Still, she had a fight to finish. She pivoted her feet around, clamping down on Krum's windpipe. The panicked blows he rained down on her thighs hurt like hell, but left him completely unguarded when she kidney-punched him. Getting a last-minute burst of inspiration, Krum grabbed hold of one of her feet and twisted gently, causing her to howl and instinctively retract her foot, breaking the throatlock in the process. Enraged, she brought the offended foot back around and kicked him in the stomach before he could recover. Getting to her feet, she was about to drop-kick his chin when Krum's hand came up. "Yield!" He shouted. "I yield."

Wary of retaliation, Rose limped closer to the giant bulgarian and offered her hand to him.

"Zank you." He said as he grabbed her hand. "You spar viciously."

"It's what I do."

"For a living?"

She shrugged. "Something along those lines."

Viktor took a good look at her. Up close, the scars stood out as if they'd been painted on, the pale lines and furrows contrasting heavily with the flushed skin of his fighting partner. "You veren't kidding about vhat you said earlier."

Rose just shook her head. "No, I wasn't. But it's okay. This was a spar, after all. I wasn't going to kill you."

"Vhat did zis to you? And how can you still fight with such tissue damage?"

"It's all superficial. The damage was repaired a long time ago. About the only one that's caused me problems is this one." She said, pointing to the symbol by which she was known. "Crazy headaches, though it's not bothered me for a while now."

"And how did you get zem?"

"Not telling. Girl's gotta have some secrets, you know." She stopped, pondering something. "Although, if you really want to find out, I'll give you a hint."

"And zat hint vould be?"

"My squad has a saying. 'Who dares, wins'. They picked it out of a pre-Dark history book."

"And zat's it?"

"More than enough, big guy. More than enough. See ya."

That saying, she limped off to retrieve her sword and get changed for dinner, leaving a bemused Bulgarian and some very scared muggleborns in her wake. "Goodbye." Krum said before leaning over and vomiting his lunch onto the ground. Maybe eating Maria's muggle space cake had been a bad idea.

* * *

"She said _what_?"

"Who dares, wins. What does that mean?"

Hermione just stared at Ron. "How can you not- wait, stupid question."

"Hey!" Weasley said, clearly offended. "Just because _you_ know it-"

"I wasn't referring to your blondeness, Ronald!" She huffed. "It's a reference to a muggle military thing."

"Uh, Hermione? What's military again? I forgot."

"Muggle term for Army-related, Ron. Though why they don't cover it in muggle studies is beyond me."

"So what's the reference for?"

"There's a group of soldiers, very good soldiers, who use that as their motto."

"Soldiers?"

"Muggle hit-wizards, Ron. The people who deal with situations nobody else wants to."

"Like what?"

"Wars, fighting, natural disasters, that kind of thing."

"Ah." Ron said, nodding. "Muggle Hit-wizards. What a world. So that's what Rose is?"

"No, she isn't. The soldiers that use that motto are not your normal kind of soldier."

"What kind are they?" He asked, looking confused as he ate his meal.

"They're the best at what they do." She said, still digesting the implications as much as she was trying to digest a house-elf's idea of what a BLT was. She'd tried explaining what a lettuce was to them, but the poor dears had used some kind of boiled root vegetable instead. Oh, how she missed mum's cooking. "They're the people you turn to when you need something done and done well."

"An whaffs vaft?"

"Don't talk with your mouth full Ron. It's unseemly." Hermione huffed. Weasley just looked at her, confused. "It means bad, Ron. Bad." She said, rolling her eyes at him. Why did this supposed school not have English classes? Just one more thing she would add to her list, right behind 'get rid of cooks-uh, liberate house elves'. English is not an instinctual language, no matter what anyone said. At least it helped explain the Daily Prophet's approach to journalism i.e. its non-existent capabilities at reporting the facts clearly and concisely. How in the world had the wizarding world survived this long? Oh wait, it hadn't. A banana republic in downtown London. That should have been her first clue to Stay Away.

Ron gulped down his food in a way that would have given his local GP a heart attack. "You still haven't answered the question, you know."

"Well, if I'd _understood what you were trying to say_, then I would have."

"And what's that?"

"What's what?"

"The quest- no wait, backtracking... What does that mean, if you want the job done, and done well? What kind of hit-wiz-soldiers are they, Hermione?"

"The good kind. That's all you're allowed to know." Damn, watching Ron get frustrated was so much fun. Almost as much as making him read a book with no pictures in it. It helped distract her when things were going bad.

As in, finding out that this year's threat (_potential threat, Hermione. She may not be the actual threat this year._) may just be a special forces soldier that fought zombies and bandits for a living bad. Yes, she definitely needed this distraction right now.

* * *

Rose ate slowly, nursing the developing bruise on her back as she checked out the table she was sitting at. Back at the table she'd started at this morning. Had it only been one day? Still, she felt like she needed to check these guys out more thoroughly than this morning's cursory glance. It had been a while since she'd mucked about with Elites, after all. To be fair, killing as many of them as she could get her hands on had been the best survival strategy she could think of at the time, but damn if she didn't miss messing with their pretty little heads at times.

This bunch were definitely in the Elite category, though distinctly lacking in the mad skills department. A bow, a quiver of arrows and a knife would probably be enough to finish off this lot in under three minutes. Two, if she managed to drink more of that heavenly coffee before going berserker on them.

The kiddies were sizing her up now. It was kind of cute. "What?" She asked.

"What are you wearing?" A pug-nosed girl her age asked in a manner Rose considered condescending.

"My uniform. What does it look like I'm wearing? Your nose?" See bitch, that's what being rude gets you. If it came down to it, she'd die screaming.

"Please forgive Pansy. She's a dear, but ever so blunt when something confuses her." A brunette girl that reminded Snow of Mother said as she sat next to Rose. "Tracy Davis."

"Rose Snow." She said, nodding at Tracy. The rest of the table turned to stare at her face. More precisely, her scar. "Do I have something stuck to my face?" She asked the dark-skinned boy from yesterday sitting a few chairs away from her. "Only, I'd prefer if you told me, seeing as I'd need to clean it off before eating."

"No madam." The boy said grandly. "We are merely wondering about why you refer to yourself as Snow instead of your birth name."

"Huh? Oh you mean the whole 'Potter' thing." She exclaimed in realisation. "Yeah, they kinda died and I got adopted, so Snow it will be from now on." The table stared at her, dumbfounded. All but Tracy and the kid from this morning, who just looked smug.

"You gave up the name?" A small blonde boy asked, horrified. "But you're a _Potter_!"

Rose frowned. "Sorry kid, but I've not made anything out of clay since I left school." She sighed. "Anyway, let's start over without the rudeness. My name's Rose Snow. What about you?"

"Blaise Zabini."

"Yes, I know. You told me this morning. Weren't you the kid that pointed out Hermione to me?"

Blaise seemed to wither under the combined glares of the rest of the table. "Err-heheh, yes?"

A boy with a silver P stuck to his dress glared at Blaise. "That was _you_?" eliciting a whispered 'oh dear' from the girl sitting opposite him, a golden H affixed to her blazer. Blaise shuddered. Oh brother, he was in for it now.

"Thank you!" Rose said, smiling at Blaise. "You wouldn't believe how helpful she's been." Once again, she was the centre of attention. Messing with these guy's heads was fun. Maybe she wouldn't kill all of them after all. A few scared minions tended to work a treat. And, in the case of Blaise, scared and thankful minions would do great.

"Pansy Parkinson." The pug-nosed girl from earlier. "And I apologise for my abrupt tone." She ground out.

"Pleasure to meet you, Pansy!" Rose said in the fakest cheery voice any of them had ever heard. Okay, she apologised, but reluctantly. She would still die if she crossed Rose, but her death would be quick and only mildly painful.

"Tracy Davis, but you knew that."

"Sure do now." She smiled at the girl. "And thanks for helping break the ice here. Tough crowd."

"Daphne Greengrass." A blonde girl said in a fake-emotionless monotone. "And this is my irritating sister, Astoria."

"Hi!" A hyper little brunette shouted at her. "Pleased to meet you! You are my idol!"

"Uhh, thanks?" Rose said, confused. Just what the hell-oh, the Potter thing. Damn, that was getting annoying.

"Draco Malfoy." a blonde boy said, bowing low to her. "Lady Potter."

"Snow." She ground out in irritation. "Learn the words. S-N-O-W."

"My apologies." Malfoy said, recovering from the gaffe. "I was referring to your title."

"So wait, I'm a Lady?"

"Yes." Daphne said whilst looking at Draco a bit strangely. "You are."

"Good to know." She filed that away for later consideration. "And the others?"

"Outside our year group or sitting elsewhere. I hear that Theo- Theodore Nott, sorry Rose – is sitting over at the Hufflepuff table while Crabbe & Goyle have yet to find their way here." Blaise said. " Honestly, five years and they still have trouble when it comes to finding their way to anything more important than the toilet."

"I don't know. Toilets are pretty up there on the importance scale." Tracy pondered. "Maybe that's all they want to find out about the castle."

"Doubtful." Malfoy drawled. "I had to correct their initial assumption that the cauldron storage room held the boy's toilet during my first week here. How in the world Severus didn't notice the stench is beyond me."

Pansy snorted. "Please. He spends all day in a potions lab when he doesn't have Gryffindors to torture."

"Severus?" Rose asked. Severus was a fairly common name back home. Could it be another Panem refugee? "Who is he?"

"Oh, he's our head of house and resident potions master. See that man over there? That's him." Astoria said, eagerly pointing at a 30-odd year old man wearing a dress covered in stains and blemishes. The man was glaring at her. Oookay, whoever he is, he looks like one of those guys that had, uh, _issues_ where she'd been concerned in the militia. Still, he knew her name if he was faculty. Maybe- no, if he had been from Panem, then he'd have known the name Snow. You just don't look at a Snow that way. At least, not for long.

* * *

"Look at them."

"Huh? What is it, Severus?" Pomona Sprout asked as she looked at the grouchy head of house Slytherin.

"My Snakes." He ground out, clearly upset. "I taught them better than this."

"What?" Sprout asked before looking at the table Severus was glaring at. "Oh Severus." She chuckled. "They're just getting to know their hero. Leave them be."

Snape just kept on glaring at the table. "Whatever she is Pomona, that girl is no hero. And yet, there they are, practically eating out of her hand after a couple of seconds. Idiots."

Sprout just snorted. "Severus, they're children. Leave them to do their thing and get to eating."

"I wish I could. But it seems my appetite has deserted me."

"You know what Poppy told you, Sev. Now eat your food before I sic Minnie on you."

That attracted his attention. "You wouldn't." He stated with absolute confidence.

"Watch me. Oh Minnie!"

"Alright, alright you devil woman. Devilled eggs with bacon bits." _Pop_. "See?" He said, gingerly lifting a fork and putting it in his mouth. "I am eating."

"Very funny Sev. Now do that again, but with food on your fork this time."

Severus grumbled as he started eating his eggs. Cursed women.

* * *

Rose stepped into the Hogwarts' VIP guest room and gasped. "Whoa!" The room was easily the size of her old barracks back home. It was decorated in a style she'd never seen before too; tapestries, old furniture, an open fireplace... Just wow. There was nothing like this she could relate to back home. Doing a quick tour of the room, she discovered that there was an upper floor that held a bed capable of fitting her and about a dozen others quite comfortably. It was ostentatious. Beautiful. A statement of power. Whose? She had no idea. Hopefully hers.

She settled in a leather couch that was sitting in front of the fire, happy to just think about the days ahead in comfort.

The tournament had said nothing about killing the other contestants. Nobody was allowed to interfere with how she prepared for the tasks ahead. She was only allowed to bring her wand into the arena. But then, she was sure she could find a way around that. Maybe she would ask Blue about it.

She never even noticed when she dozed off.

* * *

Nothing much happened in the days afterward. She slept, dreamt of how she could use her wand, sorted through the memories she was allowed to access and made a list of things she'd need to buy. She trained, researched and shanghaied Hermione into helping her. She ordered books for herself, some of which would have made a few of her former crew salivate with envy and most of which made Hermione look at her in fright.

This was truly a strange time. None of the history books had really ever mentioned the late 20th century at all, focusing on the 300-year span of the Great Imperial Bloc Era that followed afterwards. And even then it had been old history, described as the golden age preceding the final fall of civilisation resulting in the Dark Times where everything just... stopped.

But to have missed this... The sheer scale of destruction and genesis boggled Rose's mind. This was the age where digital computing started. The age of wars and genocide that had resulted in the development of nuclear weapons, chemical and biological agents and all the fun things in-between. Within less than a hundred years, humanity had gone from balloons to spaceflight. From machine guns to ICBMs. From paper files to digital databases. The internet had started less than thirty years ago. An age of enlightenment that gave birth to the civilisation that would give birth to the civilisation whose ruins were combed over by Panem's rise. Her hands shook as she contemplated what she was reading. She was at the very beginning of recorded history as known to the historians in Panem. As far as they were concerned, this was the forgotten time in-between humans crawling in the mud and the Bloc's survivors heading for the stars.

Not to mention the three thousand-plus years of additional history whose existence would disappear in the nuclear fires heralding the start of the Dark Times, the In-Between and the Dark Days of the First Rebellion. Three nuclear wars. A thousand years each? Most likely. She knew at least a dozen people in Panem that would have burned a settlement to the ground with a smile on their face if it meant having access to just one of the books that was freely available to her in the here and now.

And then she received her first gun books via Owl Post. How strange, to open a book on weaponry so familiar to her in the middle of a castle untold aeons in her country's past. To see pictures of assault rifles on glossy paper, picking out the ones she wanted to get ahold of as kids flung food around the place and hexed each other with magical bits of wood. To grin as she read the specs of an F-16 fighter jet as boys & girls practiced quidditch on brooms overhead. To stare in grief at the profile of a tank ("_so this it, huh?" Liz asked, blood coming out of her eyes and ears. "Is this how I die?"_), shivering as she remembered how a future version of this machine would come for her and her squad one last time, only a select few noticing how she just stared at the page with pain in her eyes while the party was in full swing.

It was weird. But not as weird as modern magical history. Civil war, civil war, interspecies rebellion, civil war, terrorist uprising, progroms, religious persecution, genocide... One century. This century. Fifteen separate civil uprisings spread across the world, with no apparent connection to each other, often running in parralel with conflicts fought by the 'muggles'. The Potters had literally been the last casualties of the last one, laughingly termed the 'Blood War'. She looked at a moving picture of her birth parents and felt... nothing. They were strangers. She wore their faces, but hey, they were dead. Her actual parents were lost in time. Would she find a way back? Probably not, but they'd done as much as they could to prepare her for life and the militia had handled the rest. They had been good parents as far as Capitol Families went. She would try, but only after she'd won the tournament here.

Memories... Blue gave her more and more of them. Memories from people that had wielded the wand in her hand. Memories from the victorious. The fallen. The foolish. She could feel the wand's memories filling her head, of places that no longer existed, languages that were long dead, emotions for families and loved ones that were a thousand years gone. She now knew why they were being doled out sparingly. No sense getting lost in the mausoleum that the wand guided her through.

But the nightmares! Oh man, the nightmares. The people that had been after the wand had almost unanimously been very, very bad people. The scale of the slaughter the struggle for the slim piece of wood had produced was beyond anything she could have imagined. She was almost scared of finding out just how bad it had gotten. But, after Blue left and she drifted back into her own mind, she found the nightmares intermingling with her own battlefield memories. Mostly featuring monsters and tanks, but now with creatures in them whose sheer alienness just served to drive her dreams to new heights of horror. Her workouts afterwards were far angrier than any she'd done before.

She was changing and she knew it. It did not scare her. She'd been thrown in the deep end before. All she had to do now was adapt to this new situtaion.

But magic... magic made it all worthwhile. The power to bend time, space and the very fabric of reality itself to your will. It was intoxicating. She remembered how to perform spells, but the specifics still eluded her. Blue told her that her magic was just starting up again, the part of her mind that had lain dormant now starting to awake. It had run wild inside her for a decade and it would take a while to reclaim control of it. As in, several years. Until then, she could rely on nothing more than what she was capable of performing herself unless necessity dictated otherwise.

In all, despite the memories, the nightmares and the realisation that she was at the very start of her home's eventual genesis, she had a good, relaxing time. Say what you will, but a castle in Scotland was a far cry from the slums of District 11.

Then came the weighing of the wands. More precisely, the need to get her a normal wand.

* * *

"Ah, do come in my dears!" The elderly shopkeeper exclaimed as he appeared directly behind them. Minerva and Rose jumped but, while Minerva just tutted, Rose had gone to her concealed holster. Damn it! If he'd been an enemy, Rose would be dead by now. She had to work more on awareness training during her drills.

"Honestly Garrick." Minerva huffed at him. "I wish you would cease playing such games on paying customers."

"Ah, Minerva." Ollivander replied sadly. "You tried before, remember? Back when I was a teacher and you a snot-nosed eleven-year-old. Allow an old man his vagaries, if you please."

She snorted. "Please. Yer not that old and yah know it. Still got a good century to go, I reckon."

"Merlin forbid! Only a century? And who have we here? Who-dear me, is that who I think it is?"

"Yes." Rose replied. "It is I, your customer. Bow before my wallet, why don'tcha?"

"Ha! So the Prophet spoke the truth, for once. The Girl-Who-Lived actually lives."

"As if there ever was any question about _that_." McGonnagall said a bit colder than before. "You know, you're not too old for me to put you over my knee and spank you, old man."

"And deprive Madame Du Vall of her hard earned galleons. Why Minerva..." He said as he grinned at her, causing Rose to giggle.

"Damn old man! I think I like you." Rose said as she tried to stifle the laugh she felt bubbling up after looking at Minerva's expression.

"Be that as it may, we have business to dispense. Seeing as you are here for the first time, I am assuming that you're here to collect your wand, young lady?"

"Yep! Well spotted." Ollivander just chuckled as he snapped his fingers, causing a number of tape measures to fly off the shelves and start measuring snow in strange places. "Whoa-hahah! Is this really necessary? I think one of them is trying to get into my pants."

"Swat it for me, will you?" _Slap _"Thank you. Just a few more seconds, young lady, then we can get to the important part of the procedure."

The tape measures went back to their spots on the dusty shelves and Ollivander bent an ear over each one in turn. "Wild magic? At her age? Oh my!" He started to grin. "A challenge! I so love challenges."

Five minutes into the whole 'wand chooses the wizard' spiel, Rose grabbed hold of a slim holly wand and felt something explode inside her head. Magic rushed out wildly, filling the room with a rainbow of yellows, greens, reds and blacks. A song trilled through her head as she looked out at a constellation of dust motes caught in the moment. She pointed her wand straight ahead and gave the magic that she could now feel free reign to do as it will.

A brilliant seam of light came into being and slowly widened until she saw-she was not quite sure. It was like a tunnel of ethereal impressions, pulsing to her heartbeat. She stared at the entrance, enthralled at the display until, suddenly, her magic shut itself down and the whole thing closed with a _whoosh_ of displaced air. "Wha-what was that?" She panted out. "What was that thing?"

"Magic, my dear." Ollivander said with a goofy grin on his face. "Pure, unbridled potential. In all my years... you have a rare gift, girl. And a rare wand now, too. Holly and Phoenix feather, if I don't miss my guess. Yes, indeed. Almost as if fated, really."

"What do you mean, fated?" Rose asked, always wary about people talking fate and destiny. It never ended well for the fated ones.

"You see, this wand has a brother. I gave it away almost, oh, sixty years ago now. Bright young man, he was. I told him that the wand he wielded was destined for great things. And it was. It did terrible things, terrible but great. And the young man, well..."

"Well what?"

"You see, the young man, he grew up and, on october 31st, 1981, he went to a little cottage in Wales where he gave you that scar."

There was dead silence in the room for three seconds. Then Rose lost it and broke out laughing. "Damn old man, I think I really do like you! The whole drama thing? You shoulda gone into the entertainment business, you know."

Ollivander just shook his head. "Well, in the interest of fairness, I'll warn you too; the wand you hold is powerful. It's destined for great things. Treat it well and it will treat you well."

Rose nodded, turning to leave. "Thank you sir. Warning received, don't do anything too stupid with it. Minerva? Can you pay the nice man, please?" Minerva just kept staring at her like she'd grown a second head. "You old people. One little life changing experience and you go all to pieces. Hellooo, wakey wakey! Money to give to shopkeepers. Shopping to do. Or do I need to call the nice people with straight jackets now too?"

Minerva McGonnagall, deputy headmistress and privately referred to as one of the few women that could make Margaret Thatcher quail in her boots, shook herself and glared at her before handing the money over to Ollivander.

"Bye Ollie!" The strange 16-year-old shouted as she left the shop alongside her suddenly functional chaperone.

* * *

"Ollie. Heh." Garrick Ollivander smiled to himself. The next few years were going to be... interesting to say the least. After all, chaos and phoenixes go so well together. Not. Yet there she went, a chaotic girl with a wand of purest order. Hmm, maybe he should check to see if he still had those front row tickets after all...

The officials were stuffy, overbearing, self-important and so full of hot air it was a miracle they didn't just drift in from London. In other words, they acted pretty much just how you'd expect sports officials to act. Welcome to the wizarding world, where time and space is bent out of shape just so the fantastic can be made boring enough for everyone. There was Crouch with a familiar looking redhead in tow, acting like a hardass. There was that quidditch dude, probably wishing he'd brought a bigger hip flask along. There was Ollivander, looking just as cheerful and laid back as he'd looked when Rose tore a hole into the fabric of reality. Rose wondered if anything ever flustered the man.

Facing them were four figures. The first was a blonde girl, dressed in her school outfit with a little bonnet sitting on her head at an angle. The second was a boy in standard Hogwarts uniform, smiling at the officials like they were his best friends. The third was Viktor Krum, dressed in a fur coat from a bear, a red shirt with a dragon symbol on the left hand side pocket, leather pants and riding boots. Finally, the last member of the foursome was Rose Snow, also known as Lady Potter, dressed in her olive green dress uniform complete with pistol holster on her left side with the bulky semi-automatic on full display.

Crouch eyed the pistol nervously. During the first blood war, he'd seen what had happened when Aurors and Death Eaters had come face-to-barrel with firelegs that small. It wasn't pretty. And there was no way that he could ask her to take it off, considering that it seemed to be an integral part of her school's uniform. The way she stared right past them also unnerved him somewhat. It was practically impossible for a witch or wizard to stand that still for that long without hitting them with an _immobilius_. And Ludo, that drunken prick, hadn't even blinked when he clearly recognised just what the Girl-Who-Lived had attached to her belt. Oh wait, no, he'd gone and downed the flask of firewhiskey in one gulp and now was grinning like he'd won the lotto.

Finally, Garrick cleared his throat, distracting him and the more observant members of the peanut gallery from the Kedavra in a box that foolish girl was flaunting like a muggle nipple ring.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are here to test the contestant's wands. So let's get to it, I have it on good authority that there will be a buffet after the ceremony is complete and I forewent breakfast in order to get here on time. First up, Fleur Delacour, please come up to the podium."

And so it went for Fleur, Cedric and Viktor. Then Rose took one step forward and remained at attention.

"Rose Snow, please come up to the podium."

"Sir, yes Sir!" Rose barked out, eliciting a couple of smiles as she marched up to the podium. Crouch grit his teeth at Garrick's goofy grin. Of course the old fart would be delighted at the girl making a scene.

"Present wand Miss Snow!" he shouted at her as she unsheathed a wand from a boot holster that Crouch distinctly remembered banning from sale back when he'd been head of the DMLE.

"Sir, wand ready for inspection Sir!" she barked as she handed her wand over.

"Ah yes, this is the wand I sold to you, is it not Lady Potter?"

"Sir, Holly and Phoenix Feather, eleven inches Sir! This is the wand you sold me Sir!"

"Looks a bit grotty there Snow." He grinned at her while following the twitch she'd developed in her left eye. "Use more wand lubricant next time Rose. There'll be a surprise inspection later."

"Sir, yes Sir! I shall polish my wand more thoroughly from now on Sir!" She barked out, her face not changing expression when the rest of the room started laughing.

"Good, good. Here's your wand back Miss Snow. Dismissed."

"Sir, affirmative Sir!" She barked before marching back into position. Fleur just looked at her as if Snow was one of those Snorkack things that Luna girl talked about. Cedric grinned. Krum just lifted an eyebrow at her. Rose nodded at them. Ah, the local yokels were confused. Life was good.

* * *

"Er, Miss Snow!"

"Yes?"

"Rita Skeeter, Daily Prophet. We're interviewing all the tournament participants. Could you follow me please?" She grabbed the girl and pulled her into a corner of the room that was shielded from view.

Rose just smiled at the woman. "With all due respect Ma'am, but I don't do interviews. I have, however, prepared a press release that I would be glad to give you now."

"Press release?"

"A prepared statement that you can use to do your job faster instead of having to spend hours asking stupid questions and getting stupid answers ma'am." Rose said, inwardly seething at how backwards these people were. She'd seen the difference between Diagon Alley and Picadilly Circus just last week. It was like comparing night and day to her. Why, oh why hadn't she landed somewhere sensible like, say, that Montpellier place Hermione kept raving on about? Girl had issues, but she definitely knew where to go to have a good time.

"Oh, really? Can I have one then?"

"Sure." Rose said, reaching into her uniform jacket and taking out a small stack of papers she'd pre-written. She noticed Crouch tense at the buffet table when she did that. Hmm, the old man was more observant than she'd expected. Odd.

Rita read through the document quickly. "And you're saying that I can publish this under my name?"

"That's the general idea."

"Alright. Thank you miss Potter!"

"That's alright Miss Skeeter. Oh, and by the way?"

"Yes?" Skeeter asked, turning to face the girl fully only to find a surprisingly hard fist going the other way.

_Thwack!_ Rose glared down at the flabbergasted and slightly scared witch before crouching down and slipping a knife under her neck. "Now you listen to me very carefully. I'd advise that you blink at me to show that you understand, as nodding may be a bad idea. As would be talking or screaming. Got that? Blink if you have."

Rita blinked, desperately trying not to do anything that would end with her blood on the floor. Rose's eyes bore deeply into Rita's, causing the prone reporter to shiver all over. Those weren't eyes she expected to see on a child. She'd seen eyes like those before, but only when interviewing Azkaban inmates. Rose's eyes were animalistic and filled with a lust that meant very bad things for anyone who saw them. There was no soul there anymore, just a machine staring back at her. She quailed inwardly.

"Good. Now let me get one thing straight for you. If you ever, _ever_ speculate about my private life again, I will skin you. Blink if you got that." Rita blinked. "Now, if you report anything about me or mine without asking me for permission first, I will skin you, your pet crup, your three closest relatives and whoever you happen to have sex with on a regular basis. Blink if you got that." Rita blinked. "One last thing. If you ever talk about our little chat to anyone at all, know that, one day, I will find out. And when I do..."

She leaned closer, putting more pressure on the kife as she did so. Rita went red trying not to breathe. Rose looked her directly in the eye and smiled. "Good. Do you understand everything I told you? Blink if you have." Rita blinked. "Nice. I hate having to repeat myself. Control issues, don'tcherknow. Now that we've had this delightful little chat, let's go grab a drink at the bar together, shall we?" Rose stated as she pulled Rita up and dusted her off, knife still in hand. "Oh, and before you go wondering, I meant every word. Now then, drinks on me!" The suddenly cheerful girl announced, causing Rita to flinch at the abrupt change in tone.

* * *

"Wow, Rose!" Neville Longbottom exclaimed as he examined the Daily Prophet the following morning. "Rita seems to like you!"

"Thanks. Guess I just know how to handle journalists."

"Oh? And how do you know how to do that?" Hermione asked as she sat at the table.

"I learned from the best." Rose said, winking at her. Hermione suddenly had the uncomfortable feeling that she knew exactly what it was that Rose had done. You could only listen to so many stories about how her grand-dad handled nosy people before you started connecting the dots. Neville had that faux-goofy look on his face that told her that he'd worked it out too. He looked at her. She shrugged. It was Skeeter.

So that whole Spew campaign wasn't exactly well planned on Hermione's part. That did not justify Rita splashing it all over the front page of the Prophet with bad vomiting puns to boot. And that whole support Umbridge thing... Bitch deserved whatever she got, as far as Hermione was concerned.

Hermione shrugged again and kept on eating. Longbottom just looked at Rose and Hermione a bit longer before getting up and leaving.

"Heya Rose."

Rose turned around and looked up. And up. And up. "Hello." She said, deciding to be polite to the guy that was as tall as a bus. "Do I know you?"

"Ah yeh. I used ter come around and visit yer parents when you were still a wee lass."

Rose stared at him. "You knew my parents?"

"Yep!"

"Were they good friends to you?" She asked, hoping that the giant man would get to the point soon.

"Ah yeah." He said, drawing out a hankerchief and poking at his watering eyes. "They would be so proud to see ya now, Rose."

Maybe not, Rose thought. Everyone says they were so nice, so kind. Wonder what they'd think if they ever got a hold of her file and saw that most of her medals came from wiping out illegal settlements down to the last child. "I hope so." She smiled at him. He didn't know. Didn't need to. Not yet. "So what's up, Hagrid?"

"Ah yeah. I've got a secret to show yer."

"Oh-kay. And what's this secret about."

The giant glanced left, glanced right, bent over to head height and tried to whisper "The first task." Key word being tried, since every head at the table whipped around to stare at the huge man. Rose just blinked. Had her ear gone deaf again?

"Alright." She said. "Hermione, care to join us?"

"M-me? But, but..."

"Ah c'mon girl." Rose overrode her sputtering with a confident grin that didn't reach her eyes. "I could use the company."

The bushy-haired girl sighed. "Alright. Just let me go grab my coat."

"Cool." Rose said, giving her a genuine smile before turning around to the Slytherin table. "Hey Theo!" She shouted. "Get your ass in gear boy! We're going for a walk."

A brown-haired, brown-eyed boy with a completely forgettable face walked over to her. Dear god, but the kid would make a great assassin once Rose was finished with him. "What is it Snow?" The boy sneered at her. "Another round of spot-the-acromantula? Or are we out baiting Bane again?"

"Neither. I need you come along to this super-secret thing Hagrid's taking me to. Has to do with the first task. That way, you can go relay the message to Diggory while I can truthfully say that I never told you anything."

"And what do you get out of it?"

"Apart from keeping the game fair? Not telling." She smirked.

Nott smirked back. "You know, I cannot wait for you to get Sorted. You'll make a fine addition to Slytherin."

"Come on, Theo." Rose smirked. "I'm not stupid enough to join the evil house."

Nott shrugged. "Sometimes you have to sacrifice something to make yourself look like an easier target. Joining Slytherin is the best way to do that. They think we're all gullible inbreds, which makes fleecing the bastards easier."

"Hmm, I'll think about it. I bet that it'd be easier for me to go elsewhere though."

Nott just snorted. "You would be great. Plus, I doubt you can avoid it. Your twisty little brain won't fit anywhere else"

"Sod off!" She shouted at him, smiling as she heard him laugh all the way down to his dorms. She went to fetch Hermione. They had a deadline to meet, after all.

* * *

"Why did you bring the mudblood along again?"

"Can it with the rhetoric Theo." Rose said. "I know you don't believe in that stuff."

"Oh, and how do you know that?"

"Because you make sure all those muggleborn Hufflepuff firsties are well looked after, perhaps?" Hermione asked. Nott just stared at her in surprise. "What? I have eyes, you know. Plus, I saw your face when you learned how and why the Basilisk was targeting muggleborns in second year."

"See why I brought her along now?" Rose snarked.

"You may have a point there." Nott said, frowning at Granger. "You know, it seems that we have greatly underestimated you, Granger.

"Oh please Theodore, tell me what your first clue was. I'd love to know." She said, smirking at him.

Theo smirked back. "I'll be keeping an eye on you Miss Granger."

"Back atcha."

"Gesundheit?"

"Gesund-what?" Rose asked before accessing her new memories to check. "Oh, well done Nott. Nice repartee. Not."

"Thank you?" He asked, confused at the pause between repartee and his name.

"Eyah kids, this way!" Hagrid shouted quietly. Rose motioned to the others to follow her lead.

They moved down a small trail through the Forbidden Forest until they reached a clearing.

Rose stared at the large spot of grass in front of her. There were people everywhere here! She saw fences, ward-gates and heavy tents littering the ground. But the most impressive of all was the large cages set up in the middle of the enclosure which contained-

"Dragons." Nott stated as an animalistic howl tore through the night.

"Dragons?" Rose asked, a bit baffled at coming face to face with one of her favourite fairytale animals.

"_Dragons_!" Hermione whispered in fear as a twenty-metre long jet of yellow plasma illuminated the surrounding tree line.

Hagrid just looked at the three kids behind him. Hermione was shivering like a leaf despite everything he'd done to help her understand the cute creatures, Nott's face was blank as usual and Rose had an unholy look of glee on her face.

"Dragons." She stated again, her eyes lighting up in animalistic expectation. She got to kill a dragon. This was going to be _great_.

* * *

"Dragons." Nott stated.

"Dragons?" Cedric exclaimed, puzzled. He had no clue as to what Nott was going on about.

Nott just nodded. "Your first task has something to do with dragons.

"Oh great. What about the others? Do they know?"

"Rose for sure. Not sure about the others."

"Can-can you tell them too? I'd like to keep this as fair as possible."

Nott just shrugged. "Sure. And by the way? You owe Rose one."

Cedric nodded. "I know. Any idea about what she wants?"

"Beats me. You figure it out."

"Something tells me I'll find out sooner or later anyway."

Nott just left, passing a pensive-looking Neville in the corridor with Ron happily yapping on about the arithmantic properties underpinning wizarding chess. Weasley wasn't nearly as stupid as Hermione believed after all. He was just ridiculously focused on topics he was interested in. Neville knew this because, of all the Weasleys, Ron was the one who took after his father the most. And, while Arthur Weasley was basically inept at anything magic-related, he was also the only wizard on the planet that could run a computer network.

* * *

The next day, Rose received a special delivery from Gringotts. "Finally!" Rose exclaimed as she eyed the massive chest that the Goblins had had portkeyed into the Great Hall.

"Rose?" Hermione asked warily. "What is that?"

"Oh, there were a few things I couldn't find during my shopping trip that I asked the Goblins to find for me. Looks like they did, too."

Feeling an icy shiver crawl up her spine at the look in Rose's eye, Hermione calmed herself down and asked the question whose answer she suspected she already knew. "And what is in there?"

Rose just grinned like a lunatic as she opened the chest and retrieved an FN Mini-Mi with one hand. Hermione fainted. Rose cackled as she pulled out a block of Semtex with the other. Oh, this was going to be so much _fun_!

The Gryffindors crawled away as they heard the Girl-Who-Lived start laughing evilly to herself. Just what was going on?

* * *

**The First Task**

The morning of the first task dawned bright and early over Hogwarts. The Scottish landscape bathed in the golden light of morning sunshine, with only a few clouds showing themselves in the clear blue sky and a more enthusiastic than was healthy population waking up early and heading down to breakfast. All in all, a rather strange late November morn to be had in Northern Scotland, what with the lack of rain and all that jazz.

Not that it bothered Rose overly much. She was far too fixated on the coming battle for mundane things such as the weather to have penetrated her awareness just yet. She was going to get to kill a dragon today. She ran the plan through her head again, trying to iron out the kinks she'd identified and only coming up with more potential complications when the Wand chimed in.

Also, today the Wand had decided to help her. She'd mastered three spells that would be critical to her success; apparition, accio and depulso. In other words, teleportation, tractor beam and kinetic repeller spells. She smiled as she thought about those three for a while. She was looking forward to what was about to happen.

She'd found out something important about herself. Turns out that living without the ever-present threat of violence was _dreadfully_ boring. How did other people even live like this? The thrill of the hunt, the adrenaline rush of fighting, the satisfaction of dominating your enemy and turning their relatives into fodder for the system... none of it was there! How dreadfully boring this was. Okay, so it had been a relatively relaxing month, but years of this? For her? Not likely. She was starting to become as jumpy as Hermione at her worst, which was saying something. It wasn't paranoia to her, but survival instinct. She'd had to stop herself from gutting over half the people she came into contact with simply because they were getting too close for comfort. She _needed _this. It was either the dragon or whichever poor bastard ended up approaching her at the wrong time.

"A Hungarian Horntail. Huh." Rose said, looking at the little figurine in her hand with a thoughtful expression while reviewing what Hermione had dug up on the creature a few days ago; twenty metres long from tip to tail, covered in bony, blunt spikes that grew out of their plated hide. Tough enough to weather a shotgun blast at close range and armed with a vicious set of razor-sharp, well, everything.

Case in point: the Horntail's favourite hunting method consists of picking out a squishy-looking herbivore and to just land on the poor thing. The Horntail's feet, which are covered in retractable, serrated spikes, would contract just before contact, allowing those fishhooks to dig into the flesh of the animal and hold the victim in place during the flight back to the nest. If the cow, horse, centaur or whatever was lucky, they'd bleed out before being baked alive by the Horntail's fiery breath, a process that slowly cooked the fresh meat to perfection for the Horntail. Though sometimes, when eating humans, Horntails were known to skin them alive first. Huh, maybe hominid skin is just too stringy for an animal whose jaws can crack open ten-centimetre-thick metal armour with a single bite? Who cared. Well, her but hey, professional courtesy and all that tripe.

And these idiots expect her to take that monstrosity down without killing it. Using a fancy fucking stick. She smiled at the idea. They had no idea what Rose, Hermione and the Slytherins had cooked up.

* * *

To say that the goggling masses were intrigued was an understatement. The first time the _Prophet_ had published a photo of Rose Potter, the wizarding world came face to face with a metre eighty-odd sixteen-year-old wearing an olive drab dress uniform with red shoulder patches. The left and right side of her torso were studded with medals nobody could recognise while the epaulettes indicated that she held the rank of Sergeant in some unit somewhere.

Most of the muggleborn took one look at her and wondered just what part of Eastern Europe she'd grown up in. The purebloods kept pestering their half-blood friends (how daring of them to talk to impures!) about information as diverse as just what that little fireleg was good for and if that was an accurate depiction of a muggle dress uniform.

One thing was for sure, the way she held herself, the way she stared at the camera whilst remaining completely stock still unnerved the Daily Prophet readers. Her intimidating look was further enhanced thanks to short black hair and fiercely intense green eyes daring the viewer to find fault in her appearance. The fact that this was supposedly her school uniform had sparked fierce debates about what, exactly, muggles were teaching their children these days. Overall, Rose had shaken wizarding society purely by striking an imposing figure. She cackled quietly when she heard that one.

There were odd rumours mentioned about her in the papers; how she was and wasn't a Hogwarts student, how she was seen training in the forbidden forest at night, how she would sometimes appear at breakfast, covered in her own blood and claiming that she'd skinned an acromantula with a pocket knife ("I just did it once!" She'd exclaimed at Luna. "It was coming after me, I swear!")...

Quite honestly, most of the wizarding world didn't know whether the girl should be worshipped or interned for her odd behaviour. So seeing such an attractive, high-spirited and seemingly dangerous girl being pitched against a Horntail was the star attraction here. This lifted Rose's spirits even more.

All the spectators had gathered when the Horntail had been dragged in and the starting gong sounded... only to wait and wait for the girl to appear. The Horntail, on the other hand, was slowly going berserk. Though why that was wasn't noticed until fifteen minutes after the starting bell tolled...

* * *

An invisibility cloak was all well and good, but it kinda sucked when you were facing an angry mother dragon. Said angry dragon could, after all, smell you, hear you, see you in infra-red and, barring all else, sense your magical presence from a long way away. It was a flying, fire-breathing tank with an AWACS sensor suite... and it was pissed at her. So she ditched the magical jacket Dumbledore had gifted her with. It wouldn't do much good for having the Horntail pinpoint her thanks to the very thing that was supposed to keep her hidden. Instead, she opted for a dark brown khaki uniform with a magically expanded backpack thrown in. She slipped out of the tent and performed the only spell she'd need at this stage. "_Accio _swag bag." The elder wand responded eagerly to the request, sending a small backpack hurtling at Rose at top speed. She caught it without dislocating her shoulder, pulled the backpack on and dropped to the ground.

To the dragon and the spectators, nothing moved in the arena. Everyone kept peering at the tent expecting the challenger to emerge forthwith while the dragon sniffed the air in puzzlement. Something just wasn't right here. Meanwhile, Rose crawled along the ground, the backpack, uniform and slow movements hiding her from sight while she set off scent bomb after scent bomb. The dragon's nostrils twitched in irritation as its sense of smell shut down.

She finally reached the far end of the stadium. There was an outcropping starting there that ran all the way across the upper half of the stadium. She just had to get up to the escarpment without being seen by the dragon.

Rose carefully, silently took off her bag and unzipped the top pocked. She took the gloves that had been enchanted for her by Greengrass and Finch-Fletchley and put them on, feeling the magic wash over her. She could now stick to walls for five minutes. Yippee.

She got up into a crouch and thumbed a small detonator she'd hidden in her trouser pocket. A muffled _pop _came from the entrance of the grounds, attracting everyone's attention to the blast while she got the wall and started climbing. She needed to get close to that thing.

The climb wasn't hard for her thanks to her extensive fitness training and magical gloves. The uniform served better than a ghillie suit for hiding her amongst the brown rock. She came up to the narrow path winding across the arena she'd been aiming for and stopped the climb there, her position offering a clear view of the arena floor and the Dragon warily eyeing the boulder-strewn path for any sign of movement. Rose frowned, observing the Horntail for a while. Why was it focusing on the narrow, boulder-strewn pathway on the arena floor anyway? Was it the lingering thermal image of the other contestants? And, if so, why hadn't the dragon tried to fry her yet? Nevermind, she had work to do.

Moving along the narrow path, she found a new vantage point for herself. She silently prayed that she wouldn't make enough noise to attract mommy dragon's attention. Taking off her backpack, she zipped open the pouch and started rummaging through the obscured contents, looking for a specific-aha!

She retrieved a container with a pin holding the top cover closed, the blank grey of brushed steel feeling at odds with the warmth the container gave off. She pulled the pin, drew her arm back and let the now smoking canister fly into the arena, with the small cylinder landing behind a rocky outcrop. Moving quickly, Rose zipped the backpack up by touch and put it on her back again, trusting the charm to keep her hidden for the scant few seconds it would take her to reach the back of the cliff overlooking the Horntail's nest.

She started running just as the jam can exploded, flooding every magical being's thaumic senses with the magical equivalent of chaff. Neither Dumbledore, the attending half-humans or even the Goblins laying in ambush for Bagman's hide could make out the slightest detail of what magic was happening inside the boulder maze. The dragon, of course, went crazy, sitting up on its hind legs and torching the stadium floor like a garden hose full of Napalm.

Just what Rose wanted. As the angry, angry Mother started straining against the chain holding her to the arena floor, Rose abandoned all pretense at stealth. She braced herself against the wall and jumped. It was go time.

* * *

The angry Horntail was a terrifying spectacle to bear witness to. The sight of the angry mother Dragon rearing up on her hind legs and breathing fire seemingly _everywhere at once_ reminded Hermione of some Godzilla films she'd seen last summer. She really, really hoped that Rose had been on the floor just then. Hermione smiled.

Rose was a threat. Not to Hermione, really, but more like a threat in general. Hermione had spent four years holding back the forces that wanted to either kill or eat her and her fellow students. Rose gave off that exact same vibe. But Hermione couldn't, _wouldn't_ be the one to fire the first shot. She'd simply sit back and observe until Rose revealed her true intentions. _Then_ it'd be time to strike. Hard. Fast. Deadly. Just like she was supposed to have done with the Troll. With Quirrell. With Umbridge, even. But Rose was different. She would have one shot and one shot only. If she missed, well, Rose had a tendency to tell more than she thought she did when she relaxed in front of a fire. Hermione only hoped she'd have enough time to kill herself before Snow came for her.

But hey, death by Dragon? That was fine too. One less problem to overcome in her search for the threat of the year. Because, whoever summoned Rose, had done so intentionally. Hermione was sure of it. Indeed, she remembered Dumbledore's surprise as the name came out of the goblet, so she knew that the faculty wasn't in on it. That left external vectors. Still, summoning a girl who had all the hallmarks of a great serial killer on the make? That was never good.

The other reason she wanted the dragon to kill her was because it was becoming increasingly more difficult for Hermione to justify or even contemplate herself delivering the killing blow.

Hating her or not, Hermione saw that Rose, the cheerful, cheeky and crazy monster she was, was also the loneliest creature on the planet. Rose was, by design almost, constitutionally incapable of tolerating treating others as equals. They were either better than her or less than she was, both situations that warranted wildly different ways of behaving. But there never was an equal to Rose. You had to know her to see it, the subtle jabs and familiar phrasing, the soft manipulations and harsh threats she delivered, but it was there to see once you did. Rose did not tolerate anyone having any power over her other than the power she was willing to give them. And, even then, that power came with strings attached. She didn't trust anyone. She was all alone in a world of strangers and, as far as Hermione knew, she was all Rose really had in terms of a confidante.

Not that it gave her any illusions; Holding Rose Potter's secrets just meant that the girl was more, not less, likely to kill you if you betrayed her in some way. She was the kind of person that found it easier to trust and confess into people she held absolute power over rather than any friend or, in Rose's case, psychiatrist. Hermione knew that Rose knew that Granger was terrified of her, a state of mind Rose used ruthlessly in order to get Hermione to do what Rose wanted. She didn't use threats or anything. A smile here, a grin there and Hermione's mind did the rest. Rose somehow pushed all her buttons without even thinking it.

As a result, Hermione was one of the few people who knew just how much of a monster Rose was. If Snow had been a member of any army that existed on Earth, she would have been tried for a list of war crimes that looked like something that would have been tried at Nuremberg. The only thing missing was managing concentration camps for fun & profit and even there the bushy-haired witch wasn't entirely sure if Rose was keeping that one in reserve for when she got drunk.

So here Hermione was, best friend to a monster that shouldn't be allowed to live. And yet... and yet... she didn't know any better. She was born and raised to act like this. Hermione couldn't honestly blame her without acknowledging that. She was a perfect killing machine with a perfect record for obeying orders. And Hermione was the only one who knew. It was both frightening and incredibly euphoric, to be trusted so completely with this. Rose had found a friend in her and her world had gotten more complicated.

Come on, Dragon. It's just one girl with no magical training. Just fry the bitch so that Hermione didn't have to.

* * *

Rose screamed her anger and agony out at the sky. She'd forgotten how abrasive a Horntail's outer skin was and was now feeling her hands pay the price with thousands upon thousands of microscopic cuts being inflicted on her palms. Quickly summoning her gloves, donning them and quickly swallowing a bunch of painkillers once she was stuck to the horntail's back, she fished her gun out of the backpack whilst holding the Elder wand in the other hand.

Nothing had moved for the second or two it had taken to do this. She then looked to her left. Straight into the eyes of a surprised Horntail staring back at her. Oh fuck. Maybe this _hadn't been such a good idea-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!_

* * *

The spectators gaped as they finally noticed the camouflaged girl drop straight onto the back of a mother dragon, scream in pain before somehow sticking on the dragon's back with magic gloves.

Which was when the dragon decided to go berserk.

Rose held on for dear life, the _furious_ mother dragon alternatively trying to hit her with its tail, throwing herself against the cliff-face and furiously tugging away at the chain stopping it from taking even more drastic action. She felt the thing's shoulderblades move as it tried to dislodge her through musclepower alone. She eeped as a shower of debris landed on her, probably giving her bruises in places that should never ever be bruised as a result.

Then the chain snapped. That _hadn't_ been part of the plan. She was supposed to ride the dragon until it tired itself out and, in that moment of weakness, Rose was supposed to fire a three-round burst at the Horntail's eyes. But now the damn chain was broken. Which meant that the Dragon was airborne. Horntails can survive at altitudes higher than the maximum altitude a glider jet could achieve, meaning that it could now suffocate her and let her drop off its back before chowing down in a Rose sushi.

Okay, new plan.

She was still right above the heads of the screaming masses of spectators but climbing fast. She felt the air around her get thinner and colder as time went on, the Horntail's massive armoured wings beating out a steady booming rhythm even as the Dragon gained altitude. Even with the thick uniform and gloves, Rose felt her extremities start to go numb. She decided to climb the back a bit.

As they reached the clouds, Rose felt comfortable enough with her position on the Horntail's back to grab a hold of one of its scales, vertigo and thinning air warring with her adrenaline rush over who would cause the first of what felt like many strokes. The Dragon broke through the sparse cloud cover, allowing a hyper-ventilating Rose an unobstructed view of the mid-morning sun... for the second and a half before the Horntail started going in the _other_ direction.

Okay Rose, no more planning for you.

Rose screamed herself into unconsciousness at the force of both the wind and acceleration hitting her full-on.

* * *

"_Wake up Rose! WAKE UP!_"

Rose woke, blinked as she felt... strange. Where was her bed? Why was she clothed in-oh. She was in freefall. And she could see the Dragon racing just slightly ahead of her. Ah, right. Third task. How could she have forgotten that?

She assessed the damage. Her gloves were gone. The skin on her hands was shredded. The backpack and her clothes were still relatively intact. She could get out of this alive, but her hands hurt like hell now that the pain killers were starting to wear off. Oh, and of course there was crazy dragon bitch to consider.

And where was her pistol? Ah, floating several metres above her. Of course. She sighed, shifting herself into a standard parachutist's pose. She slowed down enough to edge closer to the gun hanging up above, but not enough to get a hold of it.

Suddenly, her wand arm twiched, sending a blast of magic at her other hand before the other hand took the want and repeated the procedure. Surprised, she tried thinking at the want.

"Blue? Was that you?"

_Yes._

"Why are you helping me?"

_Because I need you alive for now._

"Okay, well, thanks for that."

_Enjoy it, because I am not doing something like that again. Now get to work. _

Suddenly, inspiration struck her. She was in mid-air and falling at close to terminal velocity. Time to change the game.

"Accio Pistol!" She tried to say, but the garbled gasping worked as the weapon streaked straight for her. Grabbing the gun with her left hand, she twirled her wand hand around and pointed it at the pissed-off horntail. "Accio Dragon!"

Now, it should be noted that Horntails weigh from a weight equivalent to a small delivery van for young males to that of a large, fully loaded 18-wheeler for old females. In other words, Rose was trying to summon close to five tons worth of crazed mother dragon directly to her, but not because she expected that to be the outcome. Rose effectively created a gravity bridge between herself and the object she's summoning. She doesn't have enough mass to pull the Horntail towards her, which means that the reverse happens and she's being sucked straight back to where she started. Which is exactly what she hoped would happen.

The awareness that she was gaining on the Horntail was a distant thing. That is, until the Horntail spread its wings and slowed, causing Rose to miss its back and overtake it.

"Motherfucker!" The now desperate girl shouted, clearly recognising that having a Horntail being able to see you while you couldn't see her was to be filed under Things To Avoid. Turning around, she saw the Dragon's jaws open wide as the scaly bitch started to gain on the falling girl...

"Depulso!" Rose cried out in desperation, her lucky aim targeting the Horntail's head. This was bad. Rose needed room to move around if she wanted to keep the dragon on the back foot, but the bitch smells blood and wants it. Which is why the Horntail was coming about again.

BRAAT! BRAAT! Rose fired two bursts of pistol fire at the dragon. Amazingly, it was close enough for one of the rounds to hit an ear. Which just pissed the dragon off even more. "Depulso!"

* * *

The silence back in the stands was one of stunned incredulity. Everyone was focused on the intricate aerial battle taking place above the crowd's head, the girl using every trick she could think of to shift her position before the Horntail could get close enough to munch her.

When the girl came up with a way to slow her fall, so did the Horntail. When she accelerated, so did the Horntail. When she ducked, the dragon followed, clearly angry at not being able to snack on the ape that had dared screw with her.

And then they saw Rose do something impossible.

* * *

Rose was tired. She knew intellectually that she'd spent less than a minute in conscious free-fall. But to her battered body, she felt like she'd spent _hours_ dodging the insane beast in front of her.

"I need a plan." She sub-vocalised.

_No you don't._

"I do"

_Don't._

"Do."

Blue sighed. _First off, no you don't. You already have a plan-wear her down as much as you can before shooting her. Stick to it._

"Okay, good advice."

_No problem. Oh, and Rose? Look to your left._

She sawa massive jaw full of teeth go over her head. She felt the heated breath start to wash over her. She sensed the jaws unhinging, starting to _close-_

CRACK.

* * *

A battered-looking teen appeared a few metres above the arena floor, the loud detonation preceding the almost instinctual casting of a cushioning charm by the task's referee. She didn't look like much anymore, being pierced by what looked like dozens upon dozens of teeth. In fact, it looked like the girl had taken the majority of the Dragon's upper jaw with her following her apparition. Including the chemical regulation vents that allowed a Dragon to spew fire.

Rose stirred, half expecting to wake up in hell... or her father's office, depending on Death's sense of humour. Instead, she recognised the slag left on the arena floor after the dragon had had its way with it less than five minutes ago. Rose groaned. It certainly hadn't felt like five minutes at the time. She pushed herself up using both arms, or at least she tried to. She feel flat on her face again, surprised at having failed at something that simple. She ignored the pain coming from what felt like a kitchen's worth of knives digging into her back and lifted her right hand to her face. She tried the left... and screamed. Her left arm was gone. One of her arms _was gone!_

Looking around frantically, she finally caught sight of a hand sticking out of the ground a few metres away, still gripping the pistol tightly.

"AND IT LOOKS LIKE OUR CHAMPION SPLINCHED HERSELF! AFTER APPARATING HERSELF TO SAFETY _OUTSIDE OF THE DRAGON'S MOUTH CLOSING ON HER AT THE TIME_! INCREDIBLE!" the shocked voice of the announcer reached her ears as she went to retrieve the missing limb. She picked it up, barely noticing the blood leaking out of the open wound left behind by her splinching. Gazing around the arena in a daze, she finally located her objective. The Egg...

She could just run up and take it now. Walk away. Let the handlers deal with the irate mother. She'd taken her pound of flesh, literally. She could go home. But no. She came here to kill the thing. She would kill it if it was the last thing she ever did.

She foraged through her tattered backpack and came up with the grenade launcher. It only took one hand to operate and fired 40mm AP rounds. Just what she needed to kill that bitch.

She loaded the grenade launcher, wary of the far-too quiet stadium, when she noticed the area getting progressively darker...

She looked up and ground her teeth together in rage. The fucking bitch was going to just pluck her off the ground, eh? She wanted to hook her up and skin her alive, did she? Well, she sure had something to say about that. She pointed the M79 straight up at the descending Dragon, waited until she could see the individual scales on her belly and pulled the trigger.

_THUMP!_

* * *

With a shotgun, such a stunt would have ended with the Dragon enjoying Rose Pancakes for dinner. Unfortunately for the Horntail, instead of being hit by a hail of pellets meant to kill soft targets, the Dragon had to deal with the impact of something closer to a shaped charge. Put simply, she couldn't.

The AP round tore through her soft underbelly before becoming lodged in one of the beast's chemical storage compartments. The explosion threw the Dragon off her intended trajectory, causing the massive beast to impact with the arena cliff wall head-first. The detonation also gouged a deep hole into the Horntail's stomach, forcing Rose to wildly dodge the burning chemicals the beast's gut was gushing out onto the arena floor. Not that the Dragon was aware of that, or much else anymore.

She'd seen her sisters being deceived by egg-thieves before her turn came, all of them falling to the strange abilities the ape-things possessed. She told herself that, unlike the other Den Mothers, she would die before allowing herself to feel the shame of losing one of her eggs to the light-weavers.

Twenty minutes later, she lay on the ground, suffering a massive concussion and feeling a deep hole in her gut slowly getting wider as her stomach acids dissolved everything around them. That did not even consider the fact that she was missing most of her upper jawline, taken by the egg-stealing ape as she Moved herself out of the Dragon's maw. She was right, in the end. She would likely die before ever finding out what had happened to her egg.

The world went blurry before resolving itself into the form of the ape-thing, her egg at the thing's feet, one of the ape-thing's arms attached to her belt rather than her body, the tattered bits of second skin barely covering the thing's body. The ape thing raised a strange looking stick straight at her eye and talked in the Serpent's tongue.

"You know," Rose's breathing hitched before she got it back under control, steadfastly ignoring the greying-out world and painful throbbing of her remaining arm's broken wrist. "you are, by far, the toughest bitch I've ever had to deal with. I guess I should respect you for that, but I don't. You are a stupid bitch for getting yourself killed over an omelette ingredient, and seeing you go the way Darwin intended the stupid to go makes me all warm and fuzzy inside." Then the devil ape smiled as the wand moved ever closer to the Horntail's eye. " Just so you know, the egg you were protecting from little old me? It was a fake." The ape-thing grinned insanely as the Dragon's eyes widened in both rage and indignation. Tricked! She had been tricked into bearing another's young! "Ah, so you _do _understand after all. Well, congratulations you stupid slut. You died defending a fake egg. And with this, I wish you a painful trip to hell." She pulled the trigger on her pistol.

The three bullets entered the Dragon's brain stem via the eye, killing the giant monster in seconds as the shrapnel tore more and more brain tissue apart. Rose just looked at the Dragon fighting her end with all the pain, rage and fear such a primal force of nature could bring to bear... and lose . After the convulsions stopped, Rose bent over to pick up the egg (fuck, since when did bending over hurt that much?), stashed it securely into the nook of her right arm and limped back towards the exit.

At the sight of the heavily injured fourth champion making a determined break for the medical tent and, for all intents and purposes, looking like she'd die before making it halfway, Ludo Bagman got off his ass and screamed the end of the task for all to hear.

"POTTER-SNOW HAS THE EGG! LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THE FIRST TASK IS NOW OVER!"

Pandemonium erupted in the stands as Rose's body gave in, causing the girl to finally pass out..

* * *

"Albus."

"Yes, Barty?"

"I just received a notification from our friends in the lake."

"Yes, and what did they want?"

"They say that they're pulling out of their role in the tournament."

"WHAT? Why?"

"Something about not wanting to have angry dragon slayers traipsing around their fragile eco-system was mentioned somewhere."

"... Bloody buggering bollocks!"

"My thoughts exactly, Supreme Mugwump Sir." _Take that, you slimy fuck. "Not suited for the positon of Minister" eh?  
_

* * *

Oh look, Rose was back in la-la land and covered in blood. And the bluenette looked like she was hopped up on caffeine pills. Yippee.

"Again!" The insane avatar of Knowledge shouted. "Let's go find another Dragon huh? Kill it, destroy it! Just like the one whose brain we just pulped! Ahahah!"

"Right." Rose said. "I'll get right onto that... once I get my arm back."


	6. Asking nicely

Ask nicely next time.

**A/N: No, I am not doing the ball yet. Maybe later. It's dead boring and does nothing to really advance the plot, so I am just putting it aside for now. Instead, here's a prequel to the second task.**

* * *

"Hermione Granger?"

The girl in question woke up, clearly grumpy at having been woken up so early. "Professor? Headmaster? What's going on? And what time is it?"

McGonnagal and Dumbledore were standing in front of her bed while Crouch and that other judge she couldn't remember the name of stood behind them. Albus smiled nicely at her. Not good. "Well, to answer your questions, yes, yes, there's an issue concerning Rose that requires your participation and it's three in the morning."

Granger cursed. "What's she done now?" As if the incident at the Yule ball hadn't been enough.

"Nothing too drastic apart from her usual antics." McGonnagal cut in. "It's just a minor... _issue_, that requires your attention." She said, looking like she'd just swallowed one of Snape's special potions.

Hermione sighed. It wasn't like she could get away from dealing with this. "Okay. But that 'minor issue' better be something good or, Gryffindor legends or not, I am hexing you into next week."

Minerva just nodded while Dumbledore smiled. Hermione was starting to hate that smile.

The next few minutes were uneventful. After Minerva hustled all the boys out of the room, she ordered Hermione to get dressed in her sturdiest clothes and left the room. Now sturdy for the average student meant a heavy uniform and serviceable shoes. For Hermione, it meant that the jumpsuit and boots Rose had gotten her in London as well as the heavy leather trenchcoat and enchanted backpack she'd worked on last year.

Rose had tested out the coat on her firing range the other day during task prep practice. It could stop small calibre pistol fire and most non-Dark spells just fine. The rifle rounds still went through, but lost most of their kinetic energy doing so, which meant that they only had a slight chance of killing you instead of a guaranteed one and the leather lining repaired itself afterwards too. Rose wanted one now, which Hermione had okayed as long as the girl taught her how to handle the heavier weapons in her arsenal.

So when Hermione stepped out of the room in her black jumpsuit, brown-green leather trenchcoat, large backpack and heavy, steel toe-capped boots, it barely elicited a comment from her head of house even as Crouch and Bagman stared at her. "What?" Hermione asked them. "These are the sturdiest clothes I've got!" Dumbledore just chuckled at his student's strange clothing.

Then the group set off towards the Great Hall, which set off some alarm bells in Hermione's head. Weren't they going to Dumbledore's office? And why weren't they doing so? She reached into her coat's sleeve, loosening her wand's sheath and switching on the coat's active defence wards. A brief surge of magic from her garment caused Albus to stumble and look at her curiosly. Hermione just smiled at him, pointing at Bagman's head and mouthing 'prank'. Dumbledore just frowned and looked at her in a way that told her that, while he disapproved, he wouldn't say anything. Hermione just let out a breath in relief.

The coat twitched minutely and settled itself into a better fit. Good, the kinetic wards she'd been playing with were working. The sticking charms on the soles of her boots were ready. The barrier ward operated by a few monitoring & voice activation charms stuck to the hem of her coat was on standby. She was ready for anything and hoping she wouldn't need it.

They headed into the side room where the champions had first met. Her coat vibrated, indicating that there were humans under enchantment in the area. So far, this was not looking good. Especially when a proximity warning went off directly behind her. Someone or something had fallen in behind her and was getting closer. She pulled out a pair of glasses she'd enchanted for Rose and put them on, ignoring the odd look Crouch was giving her. The world blurred slightly before sharpening. Hermione looked back the way she'd come. There was someone there, the blur of cloaking magic hiding the person underneath highlighting him or her as a threat. There were about five others in the great hall, all milling around next to potential exits. Hermione narrowed her eyes behind those thick plastic specs. This was bad. Very, very bad.

* * *

The group entered into the small room. The other judges were there alongside the heads of Durmstrang and Beauxbatons. In one corner, a non-descript reporter for the Daily Prophet was writing things down in a little notebook. Hermione heard the door closing behind her and tensed. "So." She asked them. "What is this about?"

"Hermione Jane Granger, muggleborn, sixth year, consistently ranked amongst the top ten students in Hogwarts?" A scrawny-looking clerk type asked her.

"Yes. And what of it?" She asked, her senses spiking in anticipation when the word 'muggleborn' was uttered. The looks some of the others were giving her did not bode well.

"You have been selected to participate as a volunteer in the second task of the Triwizard tournament."

"What?" She asked. "Okay, first off, I haven't volunteered for anything. And second, in what capacity would you be 'volunteering' me for."

"Oh, has no-one told you? You have been volunteered by your magical guardian, one Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, as a hostage for the second task."

Oh. Oh no. "_What you'd sorely miss..._ Shit." She said, both expressing just what she thought of her current situation and activating the agressive defence wards on her coat. Dumbledore stiffened in shock as his own enchanted specs showed a black aura appear around the Granger girl's waistline. The clerk didn't even notice a thing.

"Indeed. If you would do the honours, John." That settled it for Hermione. One, Dumbledore would never do that to one of _his_ students. Two, if he did, _he'd _be the one to cast it. Ergo, this was not Dumbledore. These weren't the tournament officials. Hogwarts was compromised. Time to get out of here.

Auror Dawlish shook off his invisibility cloak and levelled his wand at the struck dumb teen in front of him. "_Stupef-_oof!" His stunner went wild as the girl's elbow embedded itself in his stomach, hitting the hapless reporter in the head and knocking her for six. However, what Dawlish was currently focusing on was the little girl in front of him who'd just entered right into his guard and followed up her elbow punt with a judo throw that lifted him over her head and threw him on the ground. The last thing he saw was her boot travelling at speed towards his nose.

Hermione shook her wand out of its sheath and palmed it before pointing at the door. "_Reducto!_" The deafening _Whoomph_ of the overpowered blasting hex resounded throughout the room, causing the judges to panic and duck as reflexes last used almost two decades ago started to kick in once more.

Karkaroff snarled at the mudblood bitch as a bloodlust he'd thought long forgotten reasserted itself. "_Cru-_no, _Morsus mentis!_" The mind-pinching curse headed at speed towards the girl's back. If it hit, Hermione'd be burned alive in her mind until the spell was lifted. But the wards on the coat flared, diverting the hex away from her back and into a nearby statue. The statue's head vanished in a burning mist of ashen dust. Hermione turned around and screamed "_Flamine!" _, the modified blasting charm causing a wave of concussive sound to head for the ex-Death Eater. He cast a silent _protego_, but the wave just ignored it. Magic was one thing, sound and kinetic energy quite another. And Karkaroff would have had to say the spell to include those as he rarely had to shield against physical rather than magical frequencies. Durmstrang's headmaster was blown back, howling as he flew through the air. Dumbledore nullified the wave with a silent _Silencio_ before shooting a stunner at the girl. Hermione, not exactly enthusiastic about tangling with the supposed headmaster, dove into the Great Hall and straight into the cordon of Aurors that had started to head towards the gaping hole that used to be a door.

"Stupefy!"

"Steeooopuhfy!"

"Stoopafy!"

"Stupefiez!"

"Somnium!"

"_Obstupefaciant_"

"_Protego!"_ Hermione shouted, watching in horror as her shielding spell almost buckled under the assault. She could not fight these people on two fronts. She pointed her wand back at the smoking doorway she'd come through."_Argila coniuro! Incendio!" _A wall of clay popped into existence in front of the doorway before a tongue of blue flame engulfed it, blocking the entrance at least until the fire died down. Now for the threats in front of her. "_Finite!"_ The shield vanished from existence. "_Mutare Festum! Propulso!" _The shards of wood and metal left over from her assault on the door flew outwards in all directions as Hermione's wand bucked in her hands from the kinetic feedback. Even as the supposed Aurors went to shield themselves, the purplish mist that had engulfed the area around them fell away. The Hall, instead of its normally solemn, grey stone and polished timber finish, was pink, decked out in streamers, balloons and party animals all hopping around the place and pouncing on the flummoxed attackers as the shouted for hugs and kisses. Hermione dashed towards the exit, making a note to thank the Weasley twins for their stupid pranking spells if she made it free & clear.

Gawain Robards was not a happy bunny. First off, Amelia Bones had just spent the last few days chewing him out for his lack of progress in the EuroQuid Cup Riot case. Then, he'd been tasked with leading the Hogwarts guard squad for the duration of the second task while Kingsley Bloody Shacklebolt took over his investigation. And now he was facing a sixteen-year-old girl who was nowhere near as harmless as her file indicated she was. John was already down, the Hall was a shambolic pink nightmare that gave him flashbacks of Umbridge's attempts at 'decoration' and a very angry & determined teenage witch was bearing down on his position. No, this was not Gawain's day.

"_Depulso!" _Hermione's focused banishing spell missed the guy guarding the exit, forcing her to frantically cancel the spell before it connected with the wall behind him and sent her ass over teakettle. She ducked as a chain of silent spells headed her way, the stream of jellylegs, tongue tiers, stunners and _incarcerous_ spells singeing the air as they went past her. She dove to the side as her jacket vibrated, causing the second barrage of stunners coming in from behind to sail right past her - and straight into the guy that was wailing into her. Well, at least he was down for the count.

She pointed her wand at where the stunners had come from and let her anger go. "_RUMPITUR!"_ BOOM. The canon blast charm went off like its namesake, coming into existence with the force of a thermobaric grenade. A visible wave of displaced air was pushed in front of the spell, taking everything it came into contact with along for the ride. The Aurors brought up their shields, but those buckled as the shockwave came into contact with them and were blown out of existence as the Hall's furniture collided with the hapless Aurors. By the time the last conscious Auror managed to stand up again, Hermione was gone.

* * *

Amelia Bones was not a happy woman. Fudge was riding her ass in an effort to curtail her investigation into what, exactly, had happened back during the summer. The European Cup itself had gone well, but the same could definitely not be said for the ensuing riots on the camping grounds. Reports of Death Eaters running around, twelve wizards dead and an exodus of muggleborns who'd had enough with the wizarding world did not make for happy law enforcement personnel. If she didn't come up with answers, Fudge would give someone else her job despite him being the one asking her not to do said job in the first place. She pitied Gawain, she really did, but she'd needed results yesterday and Shack was simply the best at getting them. But now this...

"What do you mean, she's gone?" She screamed over the floo connection. "Are you telling me, Auror Dawlish, that not only did you fail to stun a sixth-year, but that the entire _delegation_ I sent to guard Hogwarts failed to apprehend her too?"

"Uhh, yes." The face in the fireplace cringed at the look on his boss's face.

"_Bloody Fucking Merlin, John!_ How the hell did you manage to screw up so badly that I've got three, count them, _three_ of my best men down in St. Mungo's swearing up and down the alley that they were fighting a _fucking dark witch?_"

"Well, you see... Oh screw it. We were doing this by the book, alright? The delegation picks up the package, goes to the room, gets informed of the task and gets stunned for transport. She was the last one too. Everything was going to plan until she elbowed me in the gut and took out Karkaroff. Then, she blew up the door, leapt out into the hallway, blocked the doorway by conjuring a wall and proceeded to dismantle the contingent guarding the Great Hall."

Amelia sighed. It was days like these that she wished she'd said 'yes' and taken Bagnold's job. "And Robards? How is he?"

"Still recovering. All six stunners hit him dead on as he was fighting the Granger girl. Poppy says that he'll be up and running in a day or two."

"Bloody shit. I am sending more men over. I want a report on my desk by tonight or I'll have your badge. Understood John?"

"Yes Lady Bones."

"Oh, and John? This had better not happen again, _ever_. You will not like the consequences if it does."

She cancelled the connection, going back to her desk and pulling out a bottle of firewhiskey she held in reserve for just such an occasion. She called it her Disaster Relief Donation. Whenever a monumental screw-up happened, out came the bottle. And there had been so many recently that Amelia was starting to think that maybe, just _maybe_, she should find something less mind-numbing to use as a coping mechanism. Turning up at a Wizengamot session dead drunk was not a good idea, after all, and it was starting to look like the kind of day where this could very well happen. Still, she took the shot before throwing the bottle into the open fireplace. She definitely needed to try something else, she thought. Maybe this cigars Dung peddles in the Hog's Head? Confiscate a bunch of them and Robert's your relative or whatever.

The door opened and Hermione Granger stepped through the door. Damn. And her Disaster Relief bottle was merrily blazing away too. Seems like Dung'd be paying a visit to the holding cells sooner rather than later.

"Miss Bones! Miss Bones! There's a situation up at Hogwarts!"

"What?"

"There were at least fifteen of them. Some spelled invisible, the others polyjuiced to look like faculty! You've gotta help-"

"_Stupefy_!" Amelia sighed as the Granger girl slumped to the ground, unconscious. Sometimes, if you wanted to do something right, you were forced to do it yourself. She headed towards the door. "Groat, could you please contact Hogwarts and inform them that I have a wayward witch here that needs to be picked up? Oh, and arrest Dung for loitering, please. I want a word with him." She looked down at the strangely dressed girl that was staring at the ceiling. "_Stupefy_." Rule 2; When in doubt, double hex. Good rule to have.

**And there you have it. Yes, this update's fairly small and not very detail-oriented, but it should tie you over and show what Hermione can do after six years of the Hogwarts' survival training curriculum and having Rose in her life. The next update; day one of the first task. Magic, murder and mayhem as Rose showcases her skills and Murphy's Law goes magical. 'Til next time, enjoy!**


	7. Day one of Second Task: Say when

Task two: The dancing forest war

Day one: Say when

**A/N: Ta-dah! Here you go, the first day of the second task! Bit of a slow start, but things will pick up as the story progresses. And yes, Hermione is a bit more of a badass than in canon now that she's been directly threatened. No, Rose and Hermione are not really hooking up per se in this fic... as far as I know. Yet. Warning for gratuitous use of French and funkyness. If you've read this far, you've probably tuned in for the violence, so enjoy it.**

**By the way, I own none of this. Seriously. I just like playing in the sandbox is all.**

_There's only one thing that hasn't killed anyone in the field yet-the boots they wear. So check your boots. It'd suck to be the first to find out how your footwear can kill you. -Anonymous_

* * *

"_Professor, where's Hermione?" _Body stocking.

"_What?" Sprout asked. "Oh, her." _Thin jumpsuit.

"_Do you remember what the egg said?" The herbology professor asked. _Camouflage pants.

"_... She's the one, isn't she? The one I'll sorely miss." _Heavy boots.

"_Indeed. Impressive deduction skills, Miss Snow."_ Black top.

"_Who, professor? Who did t__his?"_ Flak jacket.

"_The Committee. You are not the worst affected either."_ Helmet.

"_Who else?"_ Spelled eyeglasses.

"_Cho Chang for Cedric. Hannah Abbot for Krum. Gabrielle Delacour for Fleur." _Enchanted chamaeleon backpack.

"_Do me a favour, Rose." Sprout__ asked her. "Bring them back alive for me."_ Battle Rifle.

"_You'll owe me." "I know."_ Pistol.

Rose stared at her reflection as she put on her gloves. The rain jacket came next. Finally, the camouflage paint Hermione had bought her as a kind of joke a few weeks earlier came on, leaving her face covered in a patina of blacks, greens and browns. Rose the fun-loving sadist went to sleep. Out came the soldier, the tribute, the monster. She looked at herself in the mirror, sweeping any emotion away from her face. They would all burn, as they always did. She put her gloved hand through the glass and stared at the broken frame before storming off. Time to do battle once more.

* * *

"Contestants!" A loud voice boomed out, the echoes reverberating over the crowd gathered to gawk at the spectacle. "Welcome to the second task of the Triwizard tournament! Instead of taking place in the lake as originally planned, this task will be held in the Forbidden Forest. It was once known as the dancing forest, a communal melting pot where members of all sapient magical races lived together in peace, protected by the Forest and its wilder inhabitants. But... Something happened there, the few survivors that came to the castle never said what it was, but I am sure you'll find out what happened there sooner or later, so no worries about _that_."

"Now, it's a designated sacrifice zone, an area no wizard or witch can enter and expect to come out the other side. This is the forest you are to traverse today. Your task is to retrieve your hostage, located at the other end of the forest, in the space of seven days. You are to present yourselves back here on noon in seven days' time with your hostage alive and in one piece if you are to successfully complete this task."

The crowd cheered as the four contestants entered the clearing. Rose switched the safety on her rifle off, conspicuously ignoring the three others' preparations as she stared at the trees stretching out as far as the eye could see.

"Now." The announcer cut over the shouts of the crowd. "Let it never be said that we, the organisers, are _not_ generous in our help & assistance. Each of the contestants gets a bag full of food and a magical map outlining the path they should take to reach their hostages." A piece of yellowing parchment appeared in Rose's hands along with something that reminded her of a coin purse with a stretching opening. She guessed that it was the goodie bag the guy was talking about. She stuffed it into her pant's back pocket and resumed her staring match with the forest.

"Contestants..." The announcer shouted as Bagman lifted a hand in the air. Rose tightened her hold on the rifle until she felt her knuckles hand came down. "Begin!"

The four contestants sprinted into the forest.

* * *

Renervation nausea was one of the nastiest ways to wake up with all your limbs still attached. Not only did it give you a splitting headache, one of the lesser known side-effects of renervation was that it temporarily boosted your senses and metabolism into overdrive. Think having a hangover and chugging a litre of coffee in under a minute while you're on the deck of a boat in the middle of a typhoon. Not fun. The vomiting doesn't help either.

Hermione came to feeling all of these things and seeing her trenchcoat absorb the vomit she'd just sprayed all over it. She cringed in disgust. She was pretty sure that she hadn't enchanted her coat to do _that_. Then again, maybe one of the blood absorption charms used in rune drawings was malfunctioning again. The possibility that she'd been vomiting enough blood to activate the enchantment did not bear thinking about, so she avoided it.

The last thing she remembered was... was... volunteering? To be a hostage? Why had she gone and done that again? Oh yes, duty, pride at being chosen for the honor, the glory... Fuck. Someone had messed with her mind. _Again_. Was it Snape again? No, he hadn't even been in the same room then. Much vaunted though the Professor's skill at mind magics was, she doubted that even _he_ could modify your memories whilst asleep on the other side of the castle. Not to mention that he'd have known better than to try and appeal to her more sentimental side. She'd have to investigate that later.

So she was an 'artificially willing' hostage. She had no idea where she was or how long she'd been out for. She checked her watch. The indicators glowed blue. Her wards were at half their charge. It took between one and two days for the coat to fully recharge, which meant that she'd been out for around twelve hours. Maybe a little more if you considered that the automatic renervation charm that had woken her up took a small percentage of the warding magic to work.

She checked her limbs. Still attached, good. Left leg chained to the wall, not good. Her spare wand was securely stashed in its panty holster, but she didn't want to take it out until she'd searched around a bit more. She sighed and reached into her coat's inner pocket for the backup specs. There was no way she was just running around with one of anything. Normal stuff went wrong sometimes, but with magic defects and errors were par for the course. Enchanted quills spontaneously combusting, magical candies that literally tasted like shit and chess sets that attacked their owners were just some of the mundane dangers students had to deal with and these dangers got more and more acute the more complicated the device they were using was. Thankfully, a pair of glasses wasn't that complex, but redundancy was a habit rather than an annoyance, so two pairs was the idea.

She checked the chain with her glasses on. A light blue aura with runes running through it glowed in the dark, almost blinding her without illuminating anything around her. Magic just wasn't fair. She studied the runes as they orbited around the chain, mentally categorising what they were and what they did when used in conjunction with the others. Hermione cursed. They were inhibitor runes, restricting her ability to mentally command magic to a stupid degree. This would not do.

The room itself was pretty drab, brown stains on sandstone, grey flagstones on the floor, dark ceiling illuminated by some weird, acid-green moss. Her glasses told her nothing about what enchantments were active in there. The whole room was flooded with red, white, blue and yellow filaments that weren't really doing anything except hang there. So no charms or active wards anywhere but on the chain-according to the glasses.

She stuffed her hand into the front pocket of her trousers and thought about a notebook and piece of paper. She grabbed a hold of them as the blue aura grew brighter. Her world swam in front of her eyes and caused her to stumble and fall on her ass. Great, it reacted to both her coat's enchantments and her own magic. If she was going to beat this thing, she'd have to do it using as little magic as possible. Shaking off the dizziness, she set to work copying the rune chain and figuring out how to beat it.

Hey, it wasn't like she had anything else to do, right?

* * *

The forest was dark and gloomy-looking on the giant screen. Albus studied it with the other judges, trying to divine just where the champions were going to go. Crouch just groused at the cost of the endeavour. It wasn't the giant screen in itself, but the installation of similar mirror-vision sets for the express purpose of allowing the Wizarding World to watch the proceedings that set his teeth on edge. That had not been anticipated in the budget, but Albus had insisted.

Albus smiled at the idea of the entire wizarding world finally getting to see their saviour perform heroic deeds rather than those fictional tales of dragons & imps that Lockhart had cooked up between 'adventure' books. It had been a struggle to get approval in time, but now it was all set up for Rose to showcase her greatness. Good or bad didn't really matter to Dumbledore. What mattered was Rose's actions and, for good or ill, her performance _will_ dazzle and finally silence his detractors.

Hell, if she acted in the way Albus knew she would, they'd finally get around to firing him from his position of chief Mugwump once and for all and send him out to fight Voldemort with full immunity. Fifty years of political squabbling & infighting was _not_ what he'd signed up for. He was a born hero and mentor to many other heroes. And, in his honest opinion, he was a better hero than he ever was a politician. And, good or bad, Rose was a heroine who'd need support and guidance. At least, that was his assessment of her. Time would tell, but even if she was another Dark Lady, she only really had one prophecy to fulfill before someone came along and shoved a kedavra up her ass, so it wasn't really relevant. It all hinged on her performance out there. And how much of the forest was left standing afterwards, of course.

Percy just stared at the other judges, paying no attention to the screen in front of him. They'd 'volunteered' Hannah. His on-again, off-again best friend with boobies-benefits ever since Penny Clearwater had gone and joined the American Legion. Quietly sitting behind Crouch, Percy Weasley plotted murder with the subtlety of a politician and the boundless reserves of righteous fury only a Weasley could muster for any length of time. He wasn't the only one.

Karkaroff just looked bored. He'd been on a number of missions in his days as a, well, better not think of that. Mind readers were around. But anyway, he knew that it would be a while before they crossed paths with anything interesting, so he settled down and went to sleep.

Bagman was already asleep, no doubt snoring off that flask of firewhiskey he'd been chugging ever since yesterday's planning sessions.

Madame Maxime wondered about how well Fleur would do out there. She was a delicate thing, and the forbidden forest tended to equate 'delicate' with 'tasty'. She also wondered just how long it'd be before Antoine Delacour decided to send his assassins after her. She was worried. Those people were _good_ at what they did.

Lost in their little worlds, none of them bothered to think about what would happen when something exciting _did_ happen. This was, after all, being broadcast live across Magical Britain, 24/7, with no interruptions or cutoffs. They'd come to regret that decision.

* * *

The forest floor was dark and gloomy, which raised a number of problems for the contestants. For Fleur, Viktor and Cedric, it meant a cautions Lumos had to be used when they wanted to make sure that a shadow was just that, a shadow. For Rose, it meant that her world was greener than green. Night vision was not the best of ideas in the daytime, but she had no real choice. It was either that or breaking out the flashlight & start shooting at shadows and, despite the truly impressive amount of stuff she'd stashed in her backpack, the need for conserving power, ammunition and supplies had been drummed into her during her ATP days, so night vision it was.

She took care to hide in the shadow of the giant trees as she assessed her environment. There was minor movement here and there, mostly small, presumably cute & furry, animals scampering away from the strange human girl that smelled like ash and gun oil. The tree tops had to be examined without her nightvision switched on, so she only did it sporadically, but she didn't see anything other than leaves and strange scaly lizard-monkeys with massive teeth scampering around up there. The scaly monkey things ignored her, so she was happy to ignore them in turn.

One good thing about the forest was that the ground was still relatively clear, with only small patches of grass and a carpet of leaves to be wary of. Since, by all accounts, wizarding warfare tended to be confrontational rather than relying on range & surprise, not to mention almost exclusively wand-based, the sparse ground cover meant that mines weren't likely to blow up in her face. She still side-stepped any strange outline her glasses showed her.

Hermione had tried to train her into how to recognise the intent of spells based on colour and light intensity, but hadn't been able to really spend the time to explain it well. Which meant side-stepping anything that glowed if she saw it. Hey, her glasses being spelled for seeing things at night was great, but trying to determine if what you were about to step on was a cheering charm or a death curse was kinda hard when there wasn't much of a difference in hues either way.

She came to the edge of what her map told her was a small clearing and shut off the nightvision with a thought. Some good work had gone into those glasses, she could tell. She squatted down and pulled a meal bar out of her jacket and started munching away, keeping an eye out for more movement. The clouds opened up, dumping a small shower on the forest as she chewed away. For a moment, she was back in Panem scouting for bandits. She savoured that moment, wondering how her colleagues and family were doing.

She listened carefully before hearing the crunch of boots on autumn leaves. She grinned. Some entertainment, exactly what she'd been looking for.

* * *

"Right then!" Cedric said, cheerfully roasting a large rat over an open fire. "Who wants lunch?"

Fleur gagged on her own bile, eyeing the skinned rodent with revulsion and a degree of hunger. "Zat ees... Deesgusting."

Victor just eyed the thing. "Dibs on the breast."

Cedric just smiled at his two companions. "Alright. Now then... ideas?"

"About what?" Krum asked. "We just follow the map."

"If zees ees about food, I propose zat two of us 'unt while ze ozzer scouts a'ead."

"Huh?" Cedric asked, confused. What the hell did the girl just say?

"Fleur." Viktor snapped. "Drop it. There's nobody but us out here."

"Oh alright." The girl huffed. "As long as you don't mention it back at school."

"What? You faked your accent... Why did you fake your accent?" Cedric asked, confused.

"Because, at Beauxbatons, I am surrounded by bitches. I wanted to be somebody other than 'little miss perfect' for once. Actually be able to talk to my fellow colleagues as an equal sufferer of 'ogwarts's legendary lack of 'ospitality. But no, now I am ze champion of L'institut de Beauxbatons. Now, zis fucking accent is getting in the way!" she just sighed. "Too late to change, now. _Putain_."

"Well," a voice said from the bushes. "Sucks to be you."

"Rose!" Cedric bellowed, frantically looking around for the psychotic beanstalk. "Uh, where are you?"

A blur dropped down from the branch overlooking the little impromptu camp they'd built themselves. Viktor looked amused when Fleur managed to jump into the bushes on reflex alone. Cedric just sighed. It was the Hufflepuff seventh year dorms all over again. "Hello there. Care for some lunch?" He said, shoving the half-cooked rat in Rose's face.

"Ew no! I'll stick to my rations thank you."

Fleur perked up. "Rations! Can I have one?"

"Wow, blondie can talk! Good for you. And no, screw you. I just came by to say hi and see how you guys were doing. Besides, you got your own ration pack in the magic pouch thing they gave you." Fleur pouted, then brightened as she came up with a bar of maybe-chocolate and started chomping down on it.

"We're doing well, thanks." Cedric smiled, deliberately ignoring the petrificus a quick-thinking Krum cast on the Delacour girl so that he could steal her chocolate bar. Fleur's wand blurred as she batted the spell right back at Viktor, causing the burly bulgarian to seize up and collapse awkwardly on the ground. "Just, you know, sitting down and having lunch."

"Ah, okay. Well, in that case..." She stood up, biting down on the energy bar in her hands. "Good luck! Oh, and if I were you, I'd suggest you stick together out here. If I were an enemy, I would've killed you all an hour ago. At least together, you stand a chance of one of you being able to have one of you survive."

* * *

The glasses worked like a charm. That is to say, using them was a haphazard, dangerous and altogether tiring affair all round if you didn't know what you were doing. Hermione did, given that she'd enchanted the four separate pairs herself, but still had the good sense to not try and do any delicate runework with the night vision switched on. Blinding yourself in a pitch black room because you had both mage sight and night vision on was something to avoid, if only to stave off having to explain the situation to Madame Pomfrey again. She'd had more than enough such occasions in third and fourth year, thank you very much. So mage sight it was.

Her penknife scritched as she carved another rune into the soft outer coating of the mythril chains, the bad penmanship guaranteeing that this one would be a power hog when activated. Thankfully, the chains themselves would provide the power to activate the super-heating spell function the rune represented. The idea was that, with enough badly carved runes, the chain would lose its magical charge faster than the dungeon's own magic could replenish it, overloading the chain's self-repair function and destroying the chain at the same time.

The _scritch, scritch_ of the knife carving into the soft mythril coating was a cacophony to Hermione's ears. The thin layer of sweat she'd developed as she kept scratching away made her clothing stick to her in uncomfortable areas. Her fear at being discovered and the general nausea of the renervation kept her from asking even harder questions, such as what to do next, where to go, how to find out where she was.

A part of her wondered if this was Azkaban. It certainly looked like it, what with the generally filthy and gloomy environs she found herself in. And, if anything, Azkaban would be the perfect setting for this insane tournament. A real crowd pleaser. Come watch the idiots get their souls sucked out during a fetch quest, ten galleons a ticket and that's cutting your throat, that is! She blew another errant strand of electrified hair out of her face. Focus, Hermione, this is important! If she got this wrong, who knew what would happen? Hadn't Parkinson been hit by marble shrapnel when she'd mixed up a runic preservation cluster and a condensation chain? Or was it Greengrass? Screw those bitches anyway, the Granger was the best at what she did.

Finally, the last rune was put in place, a general-area combination freezing and rusting charm that had been developed specifically for just such a purpose. Drawing a bit of blood from her finger, Hermione smeared the chain with a thin trail that went from rune to rune. She braced herself against the wall. "Activate!"

The runes glowed a blazing white as they started up. The sequence was working! Yes! The chain's blue aura was visibly diminishing and-

ZAP!

* * *

Rose moved silently across the plateau, her green eyes scanning the rocky outcropping with more fervor than her earlier passive scan of the forest she'd allowed herself. The map the announcers had given her indicated that there should be a way down close by, but if there was one, it was well-hidden. The scraggly tufts of grass she equated more with desert landscapes than winter in the far north just confused the living hell out of her. What was devilgrass even _doing _here? It's not like there wasn't plenty of competition going around. By rights, nothing like that stuff should be growing here. And in this damp environment? Everything she remembered about the tufts of green told her that a good storm or two would drown the goddamn stuff, but nevertheless, here it was.

Fucking magical bullshit, messing with her knowledge of what grew where. As if the wands and involvement of civilians as hostages rather than contenders in these guys' bloodsport wasn't bad enough. She patted her semi-auto rifle with fondness. Now _this_ was something she could rely on even if everything else went to shit. The wand that held a connection to miss pale & blue only worked if you wanted it to (_intent you stupid bitch_, knowledge girl had informed her when she'd asked, rude-ass cunt) and the other one, while it did its spellwork if you knew the spell, the whole learning the correct motion, enunciation and pronunciation thing was a pain in the ass _and_ made using magic in combat more of a liability than an asset.

If you were fighting, time was a luxury you would never have again if you indulged it, so spending one and a half seconds making twirly motions and using some bullshit dead language to conjure a pretty ball of light that could just as soon blow you to shit rather than the dickhead you were aiming at was a waste of everyone's time. How the hell these idiots even fought using these sticks when they were outclassed in range and rate of fire by some dude with a bow & arrow was beyond her.

Okay, so speed, versatility & agility were on their side, but she had yet to meet the adult wizard thin enough to dodge anything smaller than a low-flying gunship, so what advantage they had was just pissed to the wind. Maybe the whole 'I never need to reload a wand' thing was an advantage? Nah, the twirling and chanting thing _was_ the reloading sequence. Not like you could say the words and just chain the same spell over and over again, though that'd be pretty cool. Firing _confringo_ at a rate of about 240 instances a minute would fuck up anyone's day, even if she'd still take the machine-grenade launcher any day of the goddamn week. 240 rounds of sparkly bullshit a minute vs roughly 3-400 high-yield grenades every 30-odd _seconds_? Bweh-heheheh. Let them try to get anywhere near her if she found a portable version of one of those babies. Baddies be chunked.

Still, where was that damn descent point? She had enough rope to rappel down if needs be, but she knew better than to try that shit on unfamiliar terrain. The few times she'd had to do it during ATP free-fighting sessions had not gone well and the other times she'd done so as a scout, well, the less said about those clusterfucking sessions, the better. And this time, she didn't have a recon drone handy either. Ah, fuck it. Rose thumbed the rifle's safety and hunched behind a patch of devil grass as she unslung her backpack. The front of her pack opened at her touch, revealing a piece of yellowing parchment that should have crumbled to dust a long time ago. She retrieved it along with her spare wand and tapped the side of the parchment. The blank piece of paper filled in with what looked like ink before resolving itself into the recognisable shape of a map. A wireframe grid blinked into existence before deforming to show the contours of the terrain around her immediate vicinity, giving a fake 3d profile of the landscape. She just shook her head and waited a minute. There, the map was ready at least. Fucking irritating, having to wait for it to finish doing its thing.

Hmm, according to the map, her descent point should be right... _there_! She looked up to where her hand was pointed to see more cliff face. She frowned in annoyance, stashed the map into the inside pocket of her jacket and readied her rifle again. Approaching the cliff face, she looked at where the map had indicated and-stairs? Someone had actually hacked away stairs into the rock face? And man, they were steep. One wrong move and you'd be getting to the bottom a lot faster than you meant to. Rose just stared at the barely visible outline of rough-hewn rock and sighed. She strapped her rifle down across her chest to leave her legs free and unholstered her .45 pistol. If there was anything on the stairs, the rifle would be worse than useless. Close quarters fighting with a full-length semi-automatic rifle was suicide against ordinary humans in this kind of setting, not to mention the kind of things that tended to hunt on rocky outcroppings just like this one back home. You didn't swing a broadsword in a bar, after all. Not unless you wanted to dent the walls, ceiling and very little else in-between.

Idly, she wondered about whether giant spiders hung out on these rocks or not. Wouldn't be the first time. Thanking the stars that these idiots had never even heard of snipers before, she started down, one hand steadying herself on the rock as she slowly made her way down the stairs while the other kept her gun pointed at wherever she was looking. This was going to be _fun_, she could tell.

* * *

The runic battery had finally finished its recharging sequence. The chime it gave off woke Hermione out of her pain-induced reverie. Fifteen hours had passed since whatever it was that had drained the coat's to less than a quarter of its full capacity and about three had passed since she'd been KO'ed by the chains detecting her messing with their structural integrity. Messing with the chains' runic signature was a bad idea, gotcha. The knife was sitting on the floor nearby, its wooden handle smoking as if it'd just been fished out of a fire. She checked her gloves. Minor scorch marks were still visible all along the area covering her palms and the itching sensation underneath them indicated that whatever defensive system she'd triggered had caused either wounding or burning on her hand proper. If it hadn't been for the gloves, she probably wouldn't have had much other than a stump left if it was powerful enough to blast through the protective charms themselves. Those fuckers.

She spent a minute ranting at the walls. Nobody came to check on her, which was okay. That told her a bit about the security on this place that she could exploit. She reached once more for the discarded carving stylus and cast a gimlet eye over the wall. Granite, probably a foot thick if this place was built to Hogwarts standards. Her mind whirring into overdrive as it processed just what runic sequence would be powerful enough to gouge out the chain without killing her and whoever was on the other side of the wall, she approached the part where the chain met the wall. Whatever enchantments existed on the chain itself probably didn't extend too far beyond the connecting point with the wall itself. They _could_ be stronger on the wall, though, in which case she'd wish that the previous jolt had killed her. Either way, she couldn't stay here. These bastards had kidnapped her, which meant that she was now involved in the tournament. And nobody involves Hermione Jane Granger in anything she didn't like without her consent. The Vanquisher of Umbridge set to work.

Yep, nobody had enchanted the wall itself. Fucking _typical_.

* * *

"Putain!" Fleur yelled as she fell on her ass. "Why is this ramp so slippery?"

"Rain, two, three days ago." Viktor said. "Never reached Hogwarts. Strange."

"Oh, that's because the castle's wards stops most bad weather from getting through." Cedric said, casting a silent drying charm on the stones in front of him. A cobblestone cracked in two. Oops, maybe not so strong next time, Ced? "Bugger, anyway, yeah, it still rains and snows, but anything bigger than a small thunderstorm should theoretically be stopped from getting too close."

"It not vork very vell, zen. I remember, day after first task, massive storm outside. Boat had to be moored."

"Well, the wards have been rather patchy lately. Kind of a good thing, too, otherwise Rose'd have died against that Horntail."

"Ah, oui." Fleur said. "I watched replay of zat stunt. Daring, if a bit stupid, of 'er."

"Indeed. Very fun to vatch. And zat sing, grenade launcher? Powerful. Probably too powerful."

"I went to see her afterwards." Cedric said. "That stunt broke her arm in three places. Poppy was mad as a rabid Skrewt because of it."

The trio lapsed into silence as they kept going down to the valley floor. It was an easy walk down the broad, cobblestoned avenue flanked by abandoned houses that looked like they'd grown out of the rock. Cedric had recognised the style and told the other two about how early wizarding settlements had enchanted cliffs like these to provide fortifications that were secure against muggle invaders. This one, along with the ancient fishing village carved into the Dover cliffs, were the last vestige of such settlements in the British Isles, since gunpowder and the statute of secrecy had pretty much nullified the need for them. The statute of secrecy had done less to stop their use than the invention of gunpowder though. The ancient mountain stronghold of the Oural wizards disappearing in a massive explosion had ultimately been the death knell of settlements such as these. The goblins hadn't stopped bragging about that particular score since.

"So, vat do you sink Rose is doing right now?" Krum asked Cedric curiously.

"Oh, probably getting into trouble again. She's very good at that, apparently."

"Ah oui. Ca c'est vrai." Fleur giggled. "I hope she's okay though. She promised she'd help me get even with that _fils de pute _Crouch for stealing my baby sister."

"I hope she's okay too."

* * *

Rose wasn't okay. In fact, she was as far from okay as it was possible to get. She'd expected a lot of things coming down the crazy-ass stairs. Rock crocodiles was not one of them.

Her pistol thundered in the silence as _yet another_ rock croc tried to attack her, bluish-red blood spilling over her jacket as the thing's body sailed on over the cliff and into the misty depths. They were squat creatures, recognisable as alligators or crocodiles, but with bigger feet, more powerful legs and fangs that looked like they dripped venom.

Also, they hissed. And not in the way snakes hissed out a 'hello' or a 'you wouldn't have a spare mouse I could bum off ya, gov?' when she ran into them, but a proper, bone-chilling _hsssss_ that did funky things to her hind brain. Oh, and they jumped too as she was rather painfully finding out.

She fell on her ass as another croc came flying past like a demented drill-bit, the teeth glistening in the morning sunlight like so many razor blades just missing her face as she dove down and fired back into the croc's anus. It squealed like a stuck pig, roared and jumped backwards towards her. She fired a round into the thing's exposed underbelly before the now-trashing corpse landed on her stomach and her spine lit up like a firecracker. "Woof!" The pain and confusion increased as the corpse's twitching got more and more violent. Which is when the smell of spilled digestive juices commenced their assault on her nose. Rose, having had enough, aimed at the rock croc's brain pan and caressed the trigger. _Snap_. A convulsive jerk and the croc lay still, its enormous tail swaying from side to side like a contented cat's.

Heaving the thing's corpse off her hurting torso, Rose reloaded as quickly as she could and resumed her limp down the narrow-ass stairs, scanning the outcropping for any further well-camouflaged hand-bags-to-be. This whole Magic thing was just _bullshit_.

Half an hour of stumbling led her to a plateau wide enough for a breather and a five-minute check-up. She shucked off her bag and the upper part of her outfit. No bones broken, some heavy bruising around her stomach and rib-cage, though given the fact that she wasn't screaming in pain and vomiting blood everywhere, this meant just skin-deep bruising rather than having her internal organs ruptured like last time.

She chucked her gear back on, played with the straps a bit and took a flashlight out of her bag. She then reloaded the two magazines she'd emptied at the rock crocs and the world in general before checking the chambered mag again and refilling that one too. She shouldered her bag back on, put on her helmet, picked up her rifle and secured that too, switched the flashlight on and cautiously approached the cave opening. Food could wait for now. No need to linger on an exposed cliff-face for any longer than she needed to stay there. It was a cold day, after all.

Rose entered the cave. A twee-looking stone cottage sat on chicken legs in the corner. She was really starting to hate this whole magic business.

* * *

The hostage reception committee was antsy. The vanguard had arrived two days ago to prep the area for the arrival of the contestants as well as the hostage holding area. Out of the five-man team, only two had been there to greet the contingent of aurors, hitwizards and contracted guards meant to keep the hostages safe until the contestants arrived to take the kids back to Hogwarts. The survivors had been cagey about what exactly had happened to the three others, but had successfully cleared out the area and, once the hand-over had been done and dusted, had hit the road as fast as they could. They hadn't been heard from since.

The Auror contingent had set up the standard repellent ward set as soon as they'd arrived with the hostage, used the compound's dungeons to secure the hostages and fortified the outer walls of the small castle before unpacking and powering up a large wardstone specifically designed to let none but the guards, the hostages and the contestants into the compound. Their morning well-spent, they'd gone on to man the outer walls while the hitwizards settled into the various nooks and crannies they could find for a week-long stake-out.

Then they'd flooded the area with magical mirrors. Some hovered, others flew around, most settled themselves on walls and offered the spectators back home a bird's-eye view of an area almost unknown to anyone outside of a very special few in the department of mysterious. But no mirrors pointed at the strange skies above them. The shade of blue was just _wron__g_. It jarred at the wizards' senses with its wrongness. The stars were little better, all planetary bodies visible at night glaring an angry red in the sky. The wizards were back in Albion. And Albion was _not happy at all_.

Hermione, secure in the currently unguarded dungeon, did not know this. She had no idea she was no longer in England, let alone Earth. She had no idea that she'd been transported to a mystical sub-space pocket lost in time & space, where magic was at its purest in all the realms of man. Thus, she could be readily excused for using a blasting rune in a realm where doing such a thing was frankly stupid. But she sure found out when she activated the runes with her blood.

Her jacket suddenly hardened against her as a protective barrier so powerful it sheared through oxygen molecules stopped her from being splattered across the room by a blast of raw, destructive magic. The chain around her ankle buckled and melted as the super-powered blast tore it apart like wet tissue paper. She'd been blown across her cell, but nothing prepared her for what she'd see when she landed with nary a bruise to her name. "Ow." She moaned. "Owowow, _my head_! My _legs! Bloody hell!_ What-huh." Oh look, she thought as she gazed at the wall her runes had just blown to pieces. The entire cell was a square space made up of cracked, cooling stone. Some bits were still glowing as globs of molten granite cascaded onto the floor. It looked like hell. She felt like hell. Well, at least the door was open now. Time to move.

She limped as quickly as she could out into the corridor, wondering for a moment if she'd died and gone to hell. It looked an awful lot like the third floor corridor back in first year. Felt the same, too, though that could be from the stench of burning stone rather than from the super-dangerous environment it looked to be. Oh, who was she kidding? This was the wizarding world. They made drinking tea a life-or-death struggle half the time. A dungeon? That was just _asking_ for something big & nasty to drop in for a Hermione sandwich or two.

There were noises coming from the other cells. Seems like her little party had woken the others from their beauty sleep. Three voices, probably relatives or friends of the other contestants. She didn't have much time before her kidnappers came to pay them a visit. The first cell she got to made her stop for a second. "Cho? Cho chang? What the hell are you doing here?"

"Hermione?" The scared Ravenclaw graduate asked. "I could ask you the same thing."

"I'm here to help." The bushy-haired witch said. "Anyone in there with you?"

"Yes, a little blonde girl. Shit, they've chained her to a wall! Where the hell am I?"

"Hell, I think. Had a small accident with a blasting rune, so your guess is as good as any at this point. Oh, and you're chained to the wall too by the looks of things."

"WHAT? Oh no, not again! Please, Hermione, you have to help me!"

"Okay." Granger said, palming her wand and deciding on what spell to use. "Take cover! _Reducto_!"

The door dissolved into a mass of flying splinters & ash. "Ah! Ow! That hurt!" Cho yelled as the blonde girl tried to press herself even further into the farthest corner of the cell. "Damnit Granger! Those splinters hurt!"

"Well, at least you know we aren't dead. _Finite_!" She shouted as she pointed her wand at the chain affixed to Cho's ankle.

"Actually, if this _is_ hell..."

"Right, fine, point taken. Now go find another cell, there's still one person missing."

"Okay. And how do you know that?"

"Because there are four people in the tournament and only three of us so far, so go!"

"What? _Cedric_ did this to me?"

"Nope, it was Dumbledore." Hermione said with fake cheer. "He sold us out for the tournament. Now _go_, we don't have much time!" Cho went.

"Maman!" the young girl wailed. "Fleur! _Maman_! Aidez-moi!" Ah, French. Hermione could deal with French. Definitely beat being sworn at in Pictish. Stupid Grey Lady and her stupid penchant for archaic scottish slang.

"Ey. Je m'appelle Hermione Granger. C'est quoi, ton nom?"

"Gabrielle." The little girl replied cautiously. "Qu'est-ce que vous faites dans mon cauchemar?"

"C'est pas un cauchemar, Gabrielle. C'est reel."

The girl cried and wailed. Being told your nightmare was real was not a fun experience, as Hermione could attest to, but time was of the essence here. "Je veux rentrer chez moi! C'est pas juste!"

"Je sais, ma petite. C'est pourquoi je suis la, apres tout. Je vais te ramener chez ta soeur, d'accord?"

The little blonde girl looked at her "... Tu promets?"

"C'est promis. Quand j'ai fini avec la chaine, on pourra partir d'ici. Tu me suis?"

"...oui."

"_Finite!_" The chain dissolved into the floor under the force of Hermione's will and she found herself with an armful of grateful blonde french girl. "Allez, suis-moi fillette." She said, disengaging from the girl's hug. "Dis-moi, est-ce que tu peux parler anglais?"

"Yes." The girl's voice said. "I speak a bit of _Anglais_, but not much."

"It's alright. As long as you can understand it, little one. Allons-y!"

They fled the cell & joined up with Cho and a dishevelled-looking Hannah Abbot. Hermione groaned. Four girls versus an unknown number of kidnappers. This got better by the fucking minute. Couldn't they have kidnapped someone more capable? She felt like even Gilderoy 'the pansy not of the Parkinson clan' Lockhart would be a welcome sight at the moment. No, wait, she _liked_ the idea of having her memories intact! Auror Tonks, maybe? But no, no joy. She hoped Rose hauled ass. This was turning into one of those days again.

Translation:

"Mommy! Fleur! Mommy! Help me!"

"Hey, my name's Hermione. What's your name?"

"Gabrielle. What are you doing in my nightmare?"

"It's not a nightmare, Gabrielle. It's real."

"I want to go home! It's unfair!"

"I know, little one. It's why I'm here, after all. I'll take you back to your sister, okay?"

"... You promise?"

"It's a promise. When I'm finished with the chain, we'll be able to leave. You following me?"

"...Yes."

"Okay, now follow me girlie. Tell me, can you speak English?"

* * *

The cavernous city drank up sound and light & spat nothing back. The buildings and open spaces were dimly visible in the gloom, but it seemed that only a measly percentage of the high-yield beam her flashlight projected into the murky depths of the cave ever made it back. She couldn't hear any of the echoes she was expecting either. Apart from that, it was pretty much what you'd expect in a cave – damp, windblown and smelling faintly of rotten bread.

Her path was a fairly straightforward one, just follow the route she was on until she came out on the other side. Easy peasy. Through a dark cave filled with ruins and things that had been abandoned so long ago that a thin film of transparent rock had formed over the stuff that hadn't decayed into a mouldy puddle.

Her footfalls, for all that there weren't any reverberations coming back at her (and how big a cavern did you need for an echo to not, well, bounce all the way back again?) , still sounded way louder than they should. Every step she took ended in plomping, crunching, scraping and grinding as her boots crushed loose debris underfoot. The rifle was getting heavier too, though that was probably because of the light now strapped to the side of the barrel as much as it was keeping her gun pointed ahead in a ready firing stance as she crept forward in the gloom.

At least there weren't any rock crocs down in the dark. That would truly _suck, _having to dodge jumping reptiles with the closest thing you can get to zero visibility with a source of luminescence handy. It would be a short inconvenience though; in the dark, all they needed to do was get behind you. She knew. It was a favourite tactic of hers when dealing with Dissident patrol teams – stab them in the back in the dark. Worked well, most of the time.

The buildings started getting larger the farther she walked into the gloomy depths. The quality of the road improved dramatically as well. Less debris was scattered around, the sides of the road were now clearly delineated and signposts written in a kind of pictographic alphabet she'd never seen before indicated the name of other roads & tributaries.

It was absurdly _clean_. The large buildings, the parts that hadn't caved in on themselves at least, looked pristine. Not a patch of mould, moss or stalagmite formation in sight. The parts that had caved in showed neat interiors as well, the large bits of rock that had been either walls or roofing in the far distant past stacked either against intact wallsides or in a solid pyramid structure in the middle of the room. Not a single creature in sight, which, given the vast amounts of available shelter available in these houses, was rather strange in and of itself.

Come to think of it, this would be the _perfect_ hunting/sleeping ground for cave-dwellers in general. There hadn't been any shortage of wildlife up in the forbidden forest, so why the dearth of wildlife in a place that was a perfect shelter for anything smaller than a cargo truck? It did not make any sense. Even the air was clearer, come to think about it, which by itself was odd-_movement_!

The rifle moved like an extension of Rose's self, the sights tracking where the movement had been half a second ago. The beam reflected off stone, more stone and-clay? That was odd. Rose hadn't seen even a fragment of clay anywhere since leaving the castle. She wondered just what this was. The people that lived here hadn't looked like they'd mastered anything more complicated than carving squares out of the rock to make dwellings with, but, now that she thought about it a bit more, they had had a kind of alphabet, possibly even a numbering system if the sign posts had been anything to go by. So pottery was not too far out of the realm of possibility, right? She decided to investigate carefully.

She inched forward, alternating her viewpoint so that the rifle covered all four cardinal points, ceiling and floor with equal consideration as quickly as possible. She would inch forward a few metres, stop, look up, look down, then do a quick about-face scan, sometimes clockwise, sometimes anti-clockwise, then turn around quickly and continue forward. It was a trick she'd picked up in the arena: if it looked interesting, it was most likely a trap of some sort. A cautious approach would help either stall or thwart a surprise attack long enough for you to think and allow you to decide whether to investigate closer or run for cover.

The first time she'd done it in militia training, the instructor had chewed her out, of course, since speed was of the essence in the field and, should you not have the tools to remotely evaluate a situation without exposing yourself and your mates to needless danger, then you were fucked anyway. But the militia was not the arena. For one, you were reasonably sure that your fellow militiamen generally weren't out to kill and/or brutally maim you at the earliest opportunity most of the time and had access to basic equipment such as portable scanners when in an active combat zone. But out here, old instincts came to the fore. And this was one of those.

She eventually reached the clay thing that just sat off to one side, its rusty red colouring oddly jarring when compared to the uniform black road underneath it and the overall brownish tint of the buildings & cavern walls. It was a tall cylinder with odd squiggles running around it set on top of four metal legs. Rose passed the flashlight beam over the thing carefully, noting the moist surface of the baked clay and the intricate artwork near the top & bottom of the cylinder that enclosed pictograms similar to those on the signposts. What was it _doing _here? It looked fairly new. Who'd moved it into place? Who'd kept moss from growing over it? Was it hollow? What did it contain if it was?

That's when Rose made a mistake. She touched the cylinder. Something akin to lightning picked her up and threw her clear across the road. What the hell? And ow!

Then the stone started glowing in a weird, off-blue colour. Which was when she figured out her mistake. It was a trap. The whole cave city was a trap. Something did live here, but it sure as hell wasn't animal in nature. So what was it?

"**WE ARE THE GUARDING PRAXIS OF ARCADIA TERTIUS. YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF BORDER REGULATIONS AMENDMENT SIXTY-SIX DASH FOUR F. PREPARE TO BE TERMINATED**!" A monolithic voice that just screamed that it was of mechanical origin reverberated across the cavern. Rose's lips twitched upwards at the revelation.

An AI. Well, that answered that, then. The dull _thud_ of stone meeting stone started to reverberate through the cavern. Rose readied her rifle and started running forward. This wasn't good, but maybe she'd have some fun doing this. It had been ages since she'd gone head-to-head with sapient machines smaller than the insane tanks that roamed the deserts, after all.

And these were magical bullshit machines. Made out of clay. Clay monster shooting. Definitely on her to-do list when she used that funky Arena training room in the castle next time.

* * *

_Crack_! The rapport of rifle fire roared through the cavern, the muzzle flash messing with Rose's night vision as the bullet flew true. Terracotta fragments shot everywhere as the now de-animated clay statue of a leather-clad warrior wielding a heavy pike was pushed backwards by the force of the rifle bullet. She hadn't had this much fun in years! The stairwell cleared for the next thirty metres, Rose thundered upwards, firing her rifle as she leapt from step to step.

_Crack_! A Shield cylinder thing, one of its three supporting struts shot out from underneath it, toppled to the ground and disintegrated in a flash of fire and ozone that set her teeth on edge. _Crack_! A winged Gargoyle lost its head. _Crack_! It lost its left leg, toppling forward and down the stairs, picking up speed and losing pieces of itself as it bounced down to the streets below. The trick was to shoot out the legs and let gravity do the rest.

_Crack_! A clay warrior folded in on itself as Rose's bullet struck centre mass, allowing Rose to rush towards it and pull its head forward. It toppled over, feebly trying to grab onto Rose as it went past. Rose neatly sidestepped the swipe as she loaded a new magazine. The crash as it hit the bottom of the stairs warmed her heart.

A rusty iron spear sailed towards her out of the dark, forcing her to drop forward onto the steps and roll sideways to avoid any follow-up speartossing. The spear's shaft shattered against the far wall, the force of the throw proving too much for the much-neglected weapon. The rifle came to bear on the general area the toss had come from, lighting up what looked like a square box with legs and arms getting ready to chuck another spear at her.

_Crack! Crack_! The first shot took out the arm holding up the spear while the other blew a hole straight through the box itself, tossing the construct on its ass long enough for Rose to close the distance and kick its underside hard enough to crack the base of the box and send its cache of spears rolling out of the thing's reach. She then stomped a hole through the weakened baked clay, fraying the cartouche containing the strange pictograms. The box stopped moving. Now she was running up stairs with a sore foot. Good thinking, Rose. Nicely done.

She reached the landing at the top of the staircase to see what looked like light at the end of a corridor... coming through a crack in the caved-in section of the passage that was most probably the exit.

Rose, wary of spending time readying a charge large enough to blow a hole through the debris blocking the way, brought the Elder wand to bear on the obstruction and let anger flood her emotions. The tip of the deathstick glowed a sickly yellow before belching out green smoke. Rose ducked.

The world went white.

* * *

The trio looked on frightened awe as part of the cliff came tumbling down in an avalanche of stone a mile away from where they were. Other, more chilling sounds could be heard over the din.

"YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME ALIVE!"

"**VANDALISM HAS BEEN ADDED TO THE LIST OF CHARGES. IN THE NAME OF THE PRAXIS, **_**DIE**_**!**"

"MWAHHAHAHAHAH!" BOOM. More rocks joined the avalanche as a whole section detached itself from the rest and came down with a thunderous crash. Wait, were those _houses_ in the newly exposed cliff-face?

Cedric just shook his head. "I don't even want to know."

"Da." "Oui, bonne idee."

* * *

Hermione ran for her life as the shouting intensified. She'd taken the lead by default, really. The Hogwarts girls were used to listening to her thanks to the defence classes and Gabrielle was being irritatingly clingy. Okay, so the girl was clearly traumatised by the whole big booms, dark corridors and being chased by unknown enemies thing, but there was a time and place for wanting reassuring hugs. Running for your life was _not _such a time.

Eventually, Hermione just gave up and offered the girl a piggy back ride in exchange for not tripping her when she was peering around a corner again. Now, she was not only running faster than the other girls to clear the way ahead of them, she was also doing it with a ten-year-old girl strapped to her back. Not that she was heavy, mind. Which was weird.

The Gryffindor brainiac knew she'd normally get tired from dragging a mini-limpet around for all the times she'd been browbeaten into doing it for her baby sister, but Gabrielle was really light. Too light, really. Hermione wondered about that, privately. Something other than the threat of imminent death to ponder about, that's the spirit girl!

Oh gods, she was doing it again. Okay, stop thinking about the kidnappers who were no doubt pissed at having their pristine dungeon turned into an explosives testing range and are probably all armed to the teeth with _something_ dangerous enough to give her peers a run for their money, what they'd do to the girls if they caught them etcetera, the _important_ thing here was making sure there weren't any of them impeding their escape-in-progress.

The shouting dimmed somewhat as she reached a stairwell. Up or down? They'd expect up. Up was a good idea, but that stairwell had been used recently if the fresh mud on the landing and the flight of stairs heading upwards was any indication. Plus, they'd _expect _any escapees to go upwards and Hermione had spent far too many hours berating wannabe movie heroes about getting stuck on a rooftop to want the same thing to happen to her on whatever counted as a rooftop in these parts. But down?

Down was dark. It looked scary. It _was_ scary. It was the dumbest thing you could do, _if_ you were fantasising about the right way to escape. But, if you actually _are_ the escapee, then down makes sense. Pipes, sewers, practically any form of infrastructure involving water or power had incoming and outgoing pipes underground.

Everyone is waiting for you to make your escape by climbing upwards, which leaves less people likely to be on the lower levels. Which gave you a tactical advantage in terms of both speed and flexibility. If you ended up low enough to use the pipes, you could wade your way to safety, preferrably with your sense of smell switched off. Or you could walk until you are on the far side of the structure you're in and head up from there.

Otherwise, well, generally dark & cold areas were ideal for storing food, so you may get lucky and find a cozy place to hide in. That, and basements were cool in Hermione's opinion. Never know what you might find down in one. Case in point: Hogwarts. Never in a million years would you head into the Hogwarts dungeons and expect Severus Snape. Unless you've met him, or heard of him, or caught a whiff of his clothes, but that's cheating, so it doesn't count.

Down it was. Hermione signalled the other girls to hurry up before climbing down into the bowels of the compound. The voice that kept insisting that down was scary for a reason was ignored. Better the risk of danger than the utter certainty of it, in her opinion.

* * *

"They're gone? But... where did they go?"

Auror captain Andrews was having a bad day. No, that was a lie, it had been a bad couple of days. Life in Auror guard Section four generally went that way-there were days where things were bad, then there were days where things were worse. This, for instance, was a moderately bad day. They were sitting on top of a bunch of magically enchanted teenagers in the middle of an alien landscape with no backup and/or help capable of coming their way for the next seven days. In and of itself, that wouldn't be much of a hassle, just dig in and wait it out. But their activities and locations were being broadcast clear across wizarding Britain and he'd seen enough operations go south through leaked information to trust the whole 'oh, nobody other than the guys directly involved in this know where you are' bit any further than he could spit it.

But even that wasn't really that much worse than his normal day. Just a bit more interesting than usual, no big deal. No, what made it bad was that the four VIPs his contingent was guarding had just blown up the holding area and, well, vanished. Whatever explosive charm Granger had managed to use down there had shorted the wards and made casting a _homenium revelio_ or tracking charm an exercise in hilarious futility. Every time he cast it, the entire dungeon section lit up like a bonfire. That had been an hour ago. The bosses back home knew and would no doubt be giving him a call very soon. The floo didn't work across dimensions, so he was forced to use a mini-mirror to communicate. Not that he minded, his muggleborn roots still rebelling at the thought of voluntarily sticking your head in an active fireplace when a telephone was such an easy & simple thing to use.

"They went further into the dungeons, ma'am. Roughly speaking, we lost track of them on the second sub-level. They're heading straight down, though, if my guess is correct. The hit-wizards are deployed down there, so they won't be lost for long."

"Don't be so sure captain. Hermione Granger managed to escape Hogwarts after taking out your colleagues, infiltrate the DMLE and penetrate Madame Bones' security cordon as if it didn't exist. This despite her being _taken by surprise from behind_ by Auror Dawlish at the start of that little rumpus. Right now, she's got the drop on you, a bunch of witches backing her up and has just demonstrated a level of runic manipulation & wandless casting that's making Dumbledore go green in the face. About the only thing you have going for yourself right now is the fact that she doesn't know where she is any more than you do. God help you if she finds out that the basement she's happily gallivanting through was Morgana La Fey's. "

"And why is this an iss-ah. Muggleborn?"

"Indeed. While _we_ may know of her as a controversial defender of the realm, the muggles still remember her for her involvement in the fall of Gegedzerick's Keep and have interpreted her legacy accordingly."

"Yes, it was quite the surprise to find out that Morgana La Fey was not as bad as she's generally portrayed. And that Dark Lords & Ladies have actually been forces for good in the past, really. That was not so much a surprise as it was a gigantic shock to me. But anyway, I understand completely."

The face in the fire frowned at him. "No you do not, Captain. Let it be known that, should the young miss Granger find out that she's in Morgana's Mausoleum before you make contact with her, she will interpret you as being involved in trying to resurrect her and act accordingly. She has a tendency to... overreact to perceived threats, to put it simply."

"Madam?"

"Put plainly, she will kill everyone in the compound if she even suspects you of being the minions to a Dark Lord or Lady. "

Andrews just scoffed at the lady. "Oh, please. She's a sixteen-year-old girl."

"A sixteen-year-old who has managed to survive being thrust into the middle of the darkest intrigues of the wizarding world the minute the sorting hat covered her hair. She's more paranoid than Moody and madder than Bellatrix on a redcap binge when threatened. Let's not forget the fact that she's trained with the Dragon Slayer Snow one-on-one every day since the first task. She's spent the past two years tutoring a defence study session and does a better job than either Black or Lupin now. Everybody sees a muggleborn bookworm when facing her, captain, but the truth is that she has the makings of a magical genius and is already a truly vicious enemy if riled. I have seen it, captain. Pray you don't."

Andrews just stared at the intense face in the fire. This was insane. "Understood madame. I will endeavour to make contact as soon as possible. Any other advice you wish to impart?" What else could he say, really?

"Make sure she gets any confiscated equipment back from you Andrews. Oh, and remember to tell her to eat something sweet every once in a while. Poor girl's going to need it."

"Alright. In that case, good day, madame."

"You too, young man. McGonnagall out. Good luck. And remember to keep practising transfiguration! Such a waste of talent, this..." the voice muttered as the flames died back down to normal.

Captain Andrews sighed heavily as he contemplated the backpack he'd confiscated from the girl that morning. He had more of an idea of how to approach the girl and he knew that time was rapidly running out for doing so. Hermione Granger thought she was in danger. She was slowly cornering herself down there. And, when she did, she'd turn around. He had until she pivoted around to get to her. If he didn't, well, then he'd find out if Minerva was right and one of her cubs was, as a matter of fact, the vicious and merciless apex predator McGonnagall thought she was. Lions weren't brave, steadfast or loyal. They were simply very, very good at tearing you apart before you had time to scream. And if he did have a Lion on his hands, then at least it'd be quick if he screwed this up.

He turned back to watch the mirror charting the contestants' progress through the second task. Wait, what the hell were those three doing? Eating dinner already? Pssh, idiots.

* * *

"Blimey, Charlie." Charlie Weasley looked at his youngest brother askance.

"What is it now, mo-Ron?" The tired man asked from his spot at the table.

"The girl-who-lived! She's, she's downright dangerous she is!" Ron said in awestruck horror as the images of what was going on in the cliff caves reached them. Just in time for one of Snow's explosives to turn yet more guardian golems into so much gravel.

Charlie stared at Ron. "You just figured that out now? Bloody hell!" he knew letting Bill try out his pranks on the kid when they were little had been a bad idea, but this? How the hell was he in the top five of his year marks-wise again?

"What?"

"That bitch killed Tania! _Of course_ she's fucking dangerous, Ron. She _killed my dragon_."

"Oh, yeah. Had forgotten 'bout that." Charlie just smacked him in the back of the head. Sometimes, talking to Ron was like trying to teach Hagrid proper warding schematics after a bottle or two of firewhiskey. Actually no, that wasn't right. It was like trying to tell the half giant that 'misunderstood' meant something _entirely_ different from what he thought it did.

"Say Charlie, do you want the rest of that sandwich?"

"Just take it and shut up, please."

"Okay!"

Rose let out a roar and shot a clay golem in the gonads. Charlie toasted the screen. He knew exactly how she felt. Bitch.

* * *

Okay, so the swamp was not much of an improvement on the cliff-face. For one, it was a frozen swamp. Solid ground just looked solid but generally wasn't. The trees were either dead or probably wished they were. The water was freezing. And the wildlife was... interesting. Getting out of the ancient city had been fun. Running into more rock crocs had been less fun, especially since the remaining spear chucking pottery soldiers had added that little element of surprise she could have done without. Still, despite grazing wounds and some clay shrapnel hindering her left hand, she'd made it to the bottom of the cliff... and right into swamp country. It was dirty, depressing and dim. She loved it.

Rose whistled a tune as she waded through the knee-deep water, somewhat thankful that the very cold that numbed her legs was also preventing said legs from becoming a pair of leech-infested stumps. Her boots waded forwards, the only indication that she was indeed moving her legs right then coming from the soft crackle the partially iced-over water surface made as her shin pushed the crystalline membrane aside.

She'd been lucky, really, stumbling across an area where the riverbed shallowed out at a few centimetres below water level, sufficiently dispersing and calming the river that Rose could cross to the other side without having to fear being dragged along by the otherwise fierce currents. Of course, that meant that Rose was now stumbling along on frozen limbs across a murky bit of marshland while wondering whether she'd make it to dry land before the sun made its final plunge below the horizon.

Though, given the brown-on-black colour scheme she was surrounded with, one could excuse her for thinking that it was already nighttime. It would be easy to mistake the frost covering the trees around her to be some type of moonlight while the thick canopy and dark waters could easily fool the befuddled into thinking it was nighttime. Only the few golden rays of a twilit sun piercing the canopy nixed the idea, what little light hitting the ground being devoured and refracted by the brackish surface of the diseased pool she forced herself to wade through. Yet she still persevered with a smile on her face, memories of the New Louisiana reclamation campaign rising to the fore.

According to the map, the ruins of an old house lay on the other side of this area. She hoped she made it while there was still some light left. No point in heading for shelter if you no longer could see it without running into it first. The crackle of the water's icy surface parting under the momentum of her booted legs was the only sound in the frozen swamp.

* * *

In the meantime, Viktor was staring at the bridge the map had indicated as a good crossing point. Or rather, what was left of it.

"Voi pizda! Cedric! Is there any other crossing point marked on your map?"

"Yeeeees... But it's about thirty miles away. We may be able to make it by tomorrow, but I highly doubt it."

"And why is that?" Krum asked a tad impatiently.

"Because it's in the middle of forest goblin territory." Fleur offered. "There's even a helpful hint to stay away on the map..."

Krum went back to swearing. "ublyudok doch'ot·stalykh byk! ghoris mamis aralegitimuri spermis shemt'khvevis! Verdammte scheissbruecke!"

Cedric and Fleur spent their time staring at the ruins of the bridge. "So, it looks like the first five or so feet are still intact..." Cedric said. "I think I have an idea."

"And what would that be?" Said the Veela to the Hufflepuff.

"The first one gets depulso'ed across by the two others. The second one is depulso'ed by the one on this side while the one on the other accio's the crosser towards them. The last one is then accio'ed across by the other two. Think that could work?"

The Veela let out a low 'hmm' as she did some mental arithmancy while looking at the diminishing light in the sky and the irate Bulgarian who was so busy swearing in mangled Russian that he was missing the decisions being made without his input.

"Maybe, but at this point, it's worth a try."

* * *

Cedric's brainwave had worked. Too bad that he hadn't factored the Bridge Troll into the equation.

"Reducto!" Viktor shouted, the spell's off-blue light hitting the troll in the torso and showering the ground with gore. The troll bellowed in rage and kept coming. The trio kept running. "This isn't working!" Krum panted out, dodging the ten-foot spears the troll chucked at the group with more than a little panic. It wasn't so much that the spears pierced through tree trunks as it was that they pierced through tree trunks despite being _blunt_. And the serrated barbs didn't help his panic either. "Confringo!" The ground in front of the troll opened up in a dull roar. The troll leapt to the side. "Damn, missed. Cedric?"

"There's a guardhouse a few hundred feet away." The young man said calmly as he wove through the underbrush. A spear aimed his way stopped halfway through the trunk behind him. " Let's make for that first."

"D'accord. Viktor, run, it's my turn to cover you."

"Da! Last vone at ze house iz troll chow."

"Fuck you, Vicky."

Fleur distracted the lumbering beast for a few minutes, launching low-level hexes and jinxes at it to slow it down without exhausting her concentration. Though maybe the Densaugeo had, in hindsight, been a bad idea. Giving a troll metre-long tusks just made it more vicious, it seemed. She dodged left as another barbed pole whizzed at her at stomach height. Time to leave.

She ran through the dense underbrush, foliage tearing at her travel cloak and roots tripping her up whenever she ran too fast. The troll kept coming, racing through the forest as if it weren't even there. The only thing keeping her alive long enough to get back up was the fireballs she sent its way, the legacy of her ancestors frightening the giant grey-skinned creature into going around the resulting blazes, giving her time to stand up, snatch her wand and start sprinting again.

Finally, she came upon a stone structure that lacked a roof and, come to think of it, seemed to be suffering from a lack of wall too. It was a circular structure and had, at some point in the distant past, sported a second story if the rocky debris was anything to go by, but age and violence had torn it up badly. Still, Diggory and Krum were in there, wands at the ready, so maybe she'd have to call this wreck home for the evening. Luckily she had a wizarding tent ready.

Her boots pounded across the open ground, aiming for the narrow entrance to the side of the structure. She felt herself starting to lose speed, panting as the panic of having a troll after her warred with the reasonable, non-panicky side of her personality that told her that, well, maybe the troll wouldn't survive whatever it was the two boys were about to dish out. She sprinted at the door and tried not to think about it overly much.

The inside was a wreck. Whatever furniture there had been had long since crumbled to dust, leaving a bare room with walls full of holes where solid rock should have been. Cedric and Viktor's packs lay in one corner of the room while the two were camped in front of the window. Fleur sprinted inside and collapsed on the ground, clearly relieved at having survived the run.

"I see it." Cedric said calmly as the troll rampaged into view. A spear hit the top of the window and bounced into the room, narrowly missing Fleur on its way through the room and out the other side. "Want to do the honours, Viktor."

"Da." Krum said, his face frowning in dark anger as he made a wand motion every survivor of the blood war had learned to fear on sight. "_Avada Kedavra_!" A sickly beam of green and black sped at the troll. Cedric could feel the twinge of, well, _something_ as the light seemed to heat up the air around him. The sound of leathery wings fluttering through a starless vacuum was heard as part of the light surrounding the beam disappeared into a vortex of purest black.

The beam hit the troll dead on, the crackle of supercharged magic eating its way through the very essence of the beast echoing clearly through the clearing. It wailed one final time as the corrosive magic burrowed itself into the troll's brain, tearing it to pieces as it searched for the body's 'off' switch. Spear still held high in a firing position, the massive beast finally fell over as the last of its nerve endings were flash fried, its spine boiling in its own juices.

Krum looked at the beast in horror, having felt every second of the troll's agony through the magic he'd employed, smiled at Cedric, gave him the thumbs up and keeled over, out cold from the effort it'd taken to make the spell happen.

"Well, that's not something you see everyday." Cedric sagged in relief before turning to Delacour. "Fleur, can you give me a hand here? Krum's kinda heavy and I don't think a mobilicorpus'd be enough to move him."

Fleur glowered at him. "Give me a minute, s'il te plait. I need to redo my 'air."

* * *

The ground around the ruined house was surprisingly solid for such a water-logged area. What was marked as a house on the map had obviously been something more like a large inn than a single household residence. Rose recognised the outline of what was left of the stables, the main entrance, a large open space that might well have been a tavern and a row of caved-in rooms on the second floor that were too uniform in their design to indicate personal habitation.

She tapped her glasses and closed her fist around the elder wand, letting the influx of surrounding magics tell her what her other senses couldn't. It seemed that the inn still had a working wardstone pumping out an ever-clean and perimeter chime ward. If there was anything in there, they would know Rose was coming.

She dropped her bag onto the solid ground, twisting her head this way and that in order to catch anything trying to sneak up on her while her hand fumbled around inside the heavily expanded backpack. "Ah, right. Three pistol clips!" A thunk sounded as three magazines tumbled onto the ground. She pulled her Panem pistol out of its holster, the semi-automatic feeling like an old friend in her hand. She tested the weight again as the other hand stashed the clips into her pant pockets. She loved magic sometimes.

She double-timed her way across the inn's front yard, hoping that what remained of the hedges concealed her from whatever was likely to be inside the house. Hitting the side wall, she racked the slide on her pistol, undid the safety and made her way to the backdoor entrance. The small, well-maintained garden caught the girl by surprise. There were a lot of what looked like weeds growing in one half of the garden, but the other half made her survival-oriented conscience salivate in anticipation. The nutrients provided by the ripe tomatoes alone would be worth the energy needed to kill whatever dwelled inside the house.

The door, rickety as it was, posed a problem to Rose. Breaching a door and clearing a house was something Rose had done at least once a week during her two-year stint with the militia. Rebels and terrorists were a dime a dozen in the forests of Panem, and the barbarian tribes of the east and west coast weren't all too familiar with the concept of borders. She could clear the ruins of an apartment block with nothing but a revolver if she had to, but she generally didn't need to do it by herself. And she doubted that whatever thing used the inn as a refuge would brave the marshland in order to go after her if she stole an onion or five... Still, she needed as much of the stuff inside as she could get. She had the potions and balms packed to treat anything from frostbite to petrification, but that didn't count for shit if she didn't get any clean water to supplement her current supply as well as whatever other stuff she could pack & carry with her. She sighed, unslinging her backpack and stashing it behind a nearby bush. Whatever was in there, she was going to kill it & take its stuff.

The back entrance lit up under the glare of Rose's flashlight, the pistol aimed down the beam's centre and into what looked like the old kitchen area. Rose moved swiftly, her breathing getting harsher as she adjusted to the adrenaline coursing through her veins. She swept the harsh artificial light over the room.

The kitchen was a surprisingly large space, enough to outfit two inns of similar size. There were three large cooking areas, each with its own set of utensils still visible under the moss & accumulated debris the ward couldn't clean off. There were also three sets of basins with plumbing enchantments rather than actual plumbing, proving to be surprisingly modern to Rose's eye. There was the tiling obscured by moss, there was the igniter for the stove that had already rusted beyond repair, there was the oven, impeccably clean and cooking away- wait. An unsupervised pot of food? Out here? Riiight.

Rose started to hear her heart beat as her blood pressure spiked. The osbcuring beam of her flashlight gave way to a far sharper perception of the world, the mouldy ceiling showing itself to be at odds with the impeccably cleaned tiling that could be found covering the food preparations area. Someone was in here and they knew she was there too.

Someone that was behind her.

Oh fuck- she was rolling on the mildew-encrusted floor before she even realised she was under attack, a silvery blur moving across the space her neck had occupied a fraction of a second ago. She lifted the flashlight up and shone it straight at her attacker, hoping against hope that it was just a contestant that had gotten way too cocky. No such luck.

It took the shape of a human woman, but looked more like someone's idea of a realistically rendered naked doll than anything else. Black eyes glittered in a face with no other visible features, the whole body naked yet with none of the bits naked bodies were supposed to have. No nose, ears, nipples, genitals, hair, blemishes, scars or even pores were visible in the harsh glare of the electric light. A small amount of stubble sat where a normal human would have a head of hair available, far too short for Rose to figure out just what colour it took.

The part of her brain where her wand normally hung out activated. Monody. Avatar of tragedy, song of death, final breath given shape... there were many colourful names for the thing, but the end of the tale was the same; it decapitated its victim and tricked the headless body's magic into feeding the Monody's mitosis. In the end, if you lost, you had two hungry Monodies and a ready source of fresh meat where once you had one hungry Monody and live prey. She memorised all that even as she raised her gun and fired.

_SNAP_. The monody screamed at her despite not having a mouth, tightening its grip on a strange blade made of bone & silver as its shoulder disintegrated... and reformed just as quickly. Rose cursed loudly as she was forced to roll away from yet another lunging swipe by the thing, her flank being clipped by a swift kick the monody had given her mid-roll. _SNAP SNAP_. She fired twice more, hoping against hope that hitting it in the heart and groin would be enough. No such luck, though the heart shot slowed down the thing's attacks significantly.

The eyes. Her wand whispered to her, flashes of the wand's former masters fighting monodies going through her mind. Go for the eyes. Rose agreed and fired off another two rounds at the thing to buy herself some breathing space. _SNAP SNAP_.

Alright. She thought, taking stock of her situation as she jumped over a kitchen table. Three bullets, no time to reload, two targets. She nodded to herself and turned around.

The naked humanoid thing screeched as it lunged yet again, blade levelled at Rose's face. Rose fired, making sure the eyes filled her crosshairs. _SNAP_. The area where the Monody's nose would have been caved in, a large spray of some kind of bluish red liquid splashing out behind it. It stopped suddenly, some unseen mouth making a strangled moaning noise as the thing dropped its blade in shock. Rose wasted no time, propelling her lithe frame forward. Stopping suddenly as she came face to face with the monster, she converted the momentum into a swinging kick, taking the dazed thing in the side of its temple, causing it to overbalance and hit the kitchen's grimy stone tiling.

That was apparently enough to force it out of shock, as the monody's whole body spasmed violently when it hit the floor and its howl of pure fury suddenly turned into a magic-infused sonic attack. Her ears ringing painfully, Rose dropped to the ground like a puppet with her stings cut, the demonic thing she was facing slowly getting up. She looked for her flashlight and cursed. The attack shattered the lightbulb, leaving her to fight the strange creature with a rapidly diminishing ambient light source. She dared not channel magic in this house, too many ideas about what the things lurking in these areas did to hunt each other revolving around magic in the first place. That left- the sword. She looked around before seeing it, the bone handle of the strange blade protruding from underneath a broken chair.

She staggered up onto her feet, her wand helping to fight the nausea she normally associated with sea sickness. The monody was almost slower than she was, indicating that that attack it'd used was close to the limit of what it could do. Both noticed the other eyeing the sword greedily, surprised and frustrated that they'd been seen. Rose started the plunge for the blade first, the monody dashing madly in an effort to nullify the head start. Finally, it outpaced Rose and dove for the blade made out of its progenitor's body. It reached the blade and tugged it free of the rotten wood it'd lodged itself in, a feeling of triumph overcoming the monster's mind. With this, it could defeat the intruder. With this, its den would be saf- thump_C__lack_.

The monody blinked at a strange sight. Its sword was once again trapped, this time underneath the black leather boot that the intruder wore. It looked up, straight into the barrel of a gun.

_SNAP_. The first shot took out the monody's left eye, its deafening shriek of pain going unheard by the already deaf girl. The monster clutched at its eye, the sheer pain having caused it to flip around and hit the floor again. Rose calmly picked up the blade, taking note of the blue-red spray that decorated it. She flicked the sword once, twice, making interesting patterns on the stone floor, and advanced on the writhing form lying at her feet. She cocked her right foot back and swung it at the thing's face, hitting it right in the empty eye socket. The thing lay still, probably passed out from the pain that'd been inflicted on it. Rose didn't care as long as the thing didn't move for a few seconds. She aimed her pistol carefully and squeezed the trigger. _SNAP_.

The Monody stopped moving altogether. Rose cut off what was left of its head, just to be sure. She quite liked the bone sword. She decided to keep it. There were still more areas to explore, after all.

* * *

"Are you sure this is the right way?" Hannah asked for the umpteenth time.

"No." Hermione snapped. "I have no clue, seeing as I'm in pretty much the same boat as you, but since _I'm_ the one sticking my neck around corners first, _guess who gets to say where we go and where we don't_?"

"Okay, okay, no need to get all miss prissy."

"Oh, as if you can talk, Miss Abbot. Who do you think Neville comes and talks to when you decide to have another hissy fit and 'visit' Percy on weekends? Thomas? Finnegan? No, he comes to _me_ because I, quote 'understand his pain' unquote. So can the _fucking _attitude for five minutes or, by Merlin, I am _throwing you_ around the next dark corner I have to look in, am I clear?"

"Buh-buh-but-"

"_Am I clear, little miss Princess?"_

"Yes."

"Yes what?"

"yes'm."

Cho looked at Granger in awe. "Wow, Hermione. How the hell haven't you been chosen as prefect yet?"

"Well, I _did_ send a senior member of the Ministry to prison... I don't think I am going to have much in the way of a future in the wizarding world after that one. Plus, Dumbledore kept mentioning some things about 'flagrant disregard for authority, illegal use of monitoring charms' etcetera etcetera etcetera. He did say something about me still being able to make head girl though, but I don't really want to."

"What? Monitoring charms?"

"I, well, you know Lovegood right?"

"Ah, Loony?"

"Well, she knew a lot of suspicious stuff about me so I kinda snuck into Ravenclaw and tried to find out just what she knew, you know? I had no idea she was being bullied and, well, nerds stick together, don'tcherknow."

"Yeah..." Cho sighed. "Marietta was my best friend before that."

"Pity she was a bullying bitch."

"So you're the reason she has 'THIEF' tattooed across her forehead?"

"Bitch deserved it, trust me. And just why did she have to steal Luna's socks of all things?"

"I lived with her for four-five years. Two words, foot fetish."

"Uh, oh god, that's just..."

"Yeah. She gave the best foot massages though."

"I think I'm going to throw up now."

"Oh look, a corner." Cho said in a faux cheerful tone. "Hannah, be a darl and go stick your head around that, why don't you? Pip-pip lass, we ain't got all day." Abbot snarled at her before slinking back into line next to Gabrielle.

Hermione crept up to the corner, wand in hand and glasses giving off a green glow. "Kill the lights." She stage whispered at them. Cho and Hannah _nox_'ed their wands, plunging the corridor into darkness. Hermione went down the line and pushed them against the wall, the _clomp, clomp_ of her boots on flagstone the only indication of where she was. The clomping sound headed for the corner.

"Girls," Hermione said in a very calm voice as she stuck her head around the bend. "Run."

Which was roughly when the first glowing tentacle came the other way. Maybe if they threw Hannah at it, the thing would leave them alone? Yeah, fat chance of _that_ working. Still, something to ponder as she ran for her life. Again.

* * *

**Finally! Well, there's more where that came from, so stay tuned kiddies! This is going to be a hell of a ride.**


	8. No straight lines

**_A/N: Finally, here it is._**

The Snow Queen: Day Two

No straight lines

* * *

The first rule of camouflage- no straight lines. Straight lines aren't natural ones. When running around in a natural environment, straight lines are a dead give-away.

The second rule of camouflage- the terrain dictates everything. What dress you wear, what equipment you use, how you move, how you hide and why is all influenced by what helps you blend in best.

The third rule of camouflage- your eyes are useless. Sight is second to sound, smell and instinct. After all, you cannot hide from things you aren't aware of.

* * *

This is the start of the second day of the second task of the triwizard tournament. The three main contestants are asleep as dawn breaks. Rose Snow is awake and alert, combing the ruins of an old inn for useful items. Hermione Granger, Cho Chang, Hannah Abbot and Gabrielle Delacour are sleeping off a night of intense terror in a heavily warded storage room below the dungeons in a castle a long way from home. The Wizarding World is waking up to a day that'll herald the changes to come.

It's daybreak in the Sacrifice Zone. And things will never be the same again.

* * *

Rose was loading her weapons. The Bone Sword was in a shape-adjusting scabbard around her waist. Her uniform was once again immaculate and re-adjusted to fit the environment better-gone were the greens and blacks, in came the whites and browns of a wintertime forest. Her backpack changed colour as soon as she'd put it on to adjust the straps to fit her new gear.

It'd snowed the previous night. She loaded the bullets into their respective magazines. The short patrol she'd made just before dawnbreak showed tracks made by large animals in the snow. She re-assembled her pistol by candle-light, not trusting open windows enough to perform this task in the guest rooms. The tracks were all heading in the same direction-stampede? Herd behaviour? Impossible to know without Hermione or someone else with local knowledge around. She slid the magazine into the pistol and checked to see that everything was okay. She was working at a disadvantage here. She picked up the bolt action rifle she normally favoured over the semi-auto/full-auto rifles when scouting and cycled the bolt, checking the feed and making sure it didn't jam. She needed to get intelligence. She holstered her pistol and loaded the magazine into the rifle's box feed. She had to find the others today.

Rose Snow stood up, cradling the rifle across her chest, stamped her boots on the rotting floorboards and grinned. Today was going to be fun.

* * *

Fleur was the first to wake up. Veelas were sensuous, passionate creatures that, when flying off the handle, tended towards destroying everything around them. Everyone pictured them as being creatures of fire whereas, in reality, this wasn't the case. Veelas were a magical species that'd been created in the deepest depths of ice-age Siberia. Their descendants weren't beings of fire. Their heritage was one of ice _and _fire-fire gave them food, ice gave them comfort.  
And the dilapidated tower the three'd taken shelter in was _freezing_. For a Veela, this was almost as good as waking up on a soft, plushy, emperor-sized bed-blissful, sensual and oh so good. Fleur drifted back from the land of nod on a cloud of happiness.

She looked at the others and gasped. She was fine. Fire or ice barely affected a Veela. But Cedric's lips were starting to go blue. Viktor was shivering violently in his sleep. Her companions were freezing to death. "_Putain_." She exclaimed.

She went to Cedric first. She tried shaking him awake, but stopped when she tried shoving him and felt her feet give away from underneath her. Yesterday's damp had turned into ice, sticking her fellow competitor to the floor. She shivered in dread as to what his back looked like right then. She brought her wand up and cast a weak warming charm at him. His body went rigid under the unexpected heat and he cried out in pain without waking, which woke up Krum.

The burly professional Seeker started violently and fell back onto the floor as his body was pulled back by the robes that were still stuck to the iced-over flagstones.

Cedric finally woke up and hugged himself. "What. The hell." He stated, teeth chattering as he hunched over in pain. "Which one of you hexed me in the back?"

"No magic." Krum ground out as he muttered out healing & warming charms on both himself and Cedric. "Heating Vard failed."

"Really? When did it fail?"

"About an hour ago. Longer and ve'd be dead." Viktor stated.

"_Oui_." Fleur nodded. "It was close."

"Damn." Diggory hissed as Krum's _episkey _repaired his ravaged back piecemeal. "How did that happen?"

"The floor." Fleur said slowly. "The ward didn't stick to the water coating the surface. Probably failed ven the ice set in."

"Okay, I can see that." Diggory said. "So who's got their map handy?"

"_Pourquoi_?"

"Because it's daybreak. Best to start early."

"_Attends._ Viktor?"

"Yes?"

"You're a girl." Fleur stated quite seriously. Cedric did a double-take and fell over laughing.

* * *

Her hair was a mess. Funnily enough, that was all she could think about, all she allowed herself to think about as she woke up. It'd been a bad night. Wherever she was, it had more monsters and dangers in it than she'd encountered in her five years at Hogwarts. Considering her history, that was saying something. Her nightmares, though, took the cake. Why didn't she just dream about cakes eating you instead of the other way around like normal people? But no, _of_ _course_ she'd just dreamt about memories instead. The sad thing was that she couldn't tell the difference between her nightmares and her memories anymore.

But that wasn't important now. What _was_ important was the state of her hair. With the wards she and Cho'd cast last night and the warm little room the four escapees'd found themselves in, there was literally no danger to spend time emulating Lav-lav and Parvati at their shallowest. She sighed and started casting cleaning & beautifying charms on herself in the dark. She was going to have enough problems as it was. Facing them whilst looking like exactly how she felt struck her as slightly dumb. So she indulged herself as she let her mind wander.

Let's face it, she was stuck in a bind of her own making. Turned out that, when there were sections of an old magical castle that were left alone & unguarded when they were supposed to be shut down tight, there was a reason for such a state of affairs. She hadn't thought like a witch. True, thinking like a witch would've killed her more than once over the years, but this was one of those times where thinking that unguarded tunnels were an oversight rather than a decision to actively avoid dangerous areas (probably a standard assumption in the wizarding world as evidenced by the total lack of corpses littering the third floor corridor in her first year) had almost killed a bunch of kids as well as herself.

So she was in an awkward position (_in more ways than one thanks to that damn knot in my hair_) and the people she thought she'd been saving from a fate worse than death were now stuck with her in a monster-infested hellhole.

She transfigured a pebble into a hairbrush and ran it through her hair with steely determination. She had the means, she had the knowledge and she had the drive to get out of this. But how could she do it with three other girls tugging along? Her mind raced as she put her much-vaunted brain to work.

She could freak out later. If there was a later, that is.

* * *

The swampland was a beautiful and terrifying thing that day. An early onset of spring (or a temporal misalignment, hard to tell with magic) elsewhere had caused fresh water to cascade down from the distant mountains. There wasn't a lot of it, but the swamps were on a natural plateau that caught water as it flowed farther down into the valley and, therefore, received the lion's share of the fresh springwater. As a result, where once small ponds littered the space between trees now sprouted strange sculptures made of ice from water freezing as they come into contact with obstacles. Tree trunks morphed into pillars, bumps became stalactites and once dry ground was covered with a layer of thin, brittle coat of frozen water. It wasn't smooth by any means. If anything, the ice magnified any imperfections on the ground, turning bumpy ground into an obstacle course that was as deadly as the cold itself.

In the damp, dark landscape underneath the forest canopy, ice glittered like a million diamonds in the scraps of sunlight making it through the snow-thickened covering above, every lethal shard as beautiful and enticing as the most exotic of jewellery. It was also silent. Not a word, not a bird, not a rustle. The animals had fled the colds in favour of the richer, softer ground on the valley floor.

The frozen world was nowhere near as white as it should be, though. The waters had been muddied, corrupted by the soft grounds and bacteria, darkened by the taint of rotting vegetation and leaking magics. The result was ice painted in mottled browns, yellows and greens, water crystal matrices infused with the debris of the area they'd travelled through before arriving at the swamp and freezing.

In this world, the _thump _of a boot and the absurdly clean yet assymetrical pattern of a wintertime forest camouflage outfit stood out like a sore thumb. But that wasn't news to Rose. Winter landscapes were her favourite battlefield. It's in the name, after all-Snow. The avatar of winter, of cold, of death travelling on silent winds. To be a Snow is to know, intimately, what your namesake represents according to Grandfather. So she'd learned. She'd learned in the icy wastelands patrolled by ancient machines. She'd learned in the seasonal tundras that seemingly bred bandits, rebels, dissidents and criminals. She'd learned in the endless patrols around the northernmost Dissident containment camp, making sure that those that threatened Panem met their end on the snow fields and in the cremation ovens as they were meant to. She hadn't been born a Snow, but she'd learned.

The weather was cold, turning every inhaled breath into a sensation of sharpness, restoring her body even as she felt the icy chill settle in her lungs. The very air tugged at her skin, making her feel every blocked pore, every dirty crevice her thorough cleaning had failed to reach that morning. The lump of wood & iron in her hands was freezing her hands even through the gloves she was wearing. Her every sense was dialled up to eleven, her eyesight crisper behind the frosted glasses, her sense of smell sharper, her hearing surpassing even her own lofty standards. Not a thing moved without her knowing it. The cold was hers. Wherever it touched, wherever it went, she could follow. Whoever it touched, wherever they were, she could touch too. Her boots made nary a sound as she carefully threaded a path on the thickest patches of ice. Her winter camo was artificially dirtied, turning the pristine white into something that fit the swamp itself. She moved like she belonged. More, she moved like she _owned_ this ground. And she did.

But she was scared.

There was something, some unknown entity in the bushes watching her. She couldn't hear it, smell it or see it, but it _was_ there. Or so her instincts told her. And her instincts were never wrong.

She brushed her hand across her brow, dispelling the sweat that she'd felt accumulating there before it, too, iced over. What to do, what to do. Breaking stride-going either slower or faster before normal, non-hunted her would- would be a dead give-away. Similarly, sticking to the path she was on was just begging for an ambush. But would that be such a bad thing? Yes, yes it would. Ambushes were survivable if you knew what to look out for. She didn't know what to look out for. Ergo, sticking to her previous plan and carefully making her way through the maze in front of her was suicide. She needed a new plan. Which meant taking out her wand again. Which meant letting go of her rifle. Which was probably suicide.

Eh.

The rifle felt odd as it rolled up against her shoulder. Cold, hard and yet warm and inviting. The wand may choose the wizard, but a good rifle loves everyone. It's just not very forgiving. She reached inside her left jacket sleeve and withdrew the length of Elder from its jury-rigged sheath.

_Hello_. The grumpy-sounding voice echoed in her head. _Got something that needs blowing up again_?

"No." Rose said sheepishly. "I have a problem."

_So you need a brain instead of muscle memory for once. Interesting. And what would that 'problem' be?_ The voice of Miss Blue added with audible quote marks.

"Something's stalking me. Has been since I left the inn, I think. I need your help." She whispered.

_What is it?_ The voice said, suddenly all business. Rose kept walking as if nothing was happening, hoping against hope that the stalker wouldn't notice her getting distracted.

"Don't know." She said. "Just know that it's not human."

_Can you see it?_

"No."

_Hear it?_

"No."

_Feel it with your magic?_

"What?" She whispered in bewilderment. "How can I do that?"

_Well, you already are. You're just not aware of it._

"Oh, right. I'll go with no then."

_Has it made a sound to give it away? Anything?_

"Uhh, no."

_Then how do you know it's there?_ Blue asked, amused by the paranoia of the girl.

"Instinct. I know it's there, because there's somewhere around here where something should be, but isn't, you know? I can't explain it better than that."

_Eloquent._

"Fuck you too."

_Awww diddums. Well, there is one kind of animal that I can think of that elicits that kind of reaction, but you won't like it._

"What is it?"

_Demiguise. It's a Demiguise_.

* * *

Breakfast in the Great Hall was a muted affair. Normally, the whole thing would be a rather boisterous affair replete with tall tales and discussions taking place between friends. Today, though, Hogwarts got its first taste of an entirely muggle phenomenon, namely the relationship between children and television sets.

The live stream of both contestants and the environment they found themselves in was shunted off into a corner of the large Mirror put in place behind and just above the professors' dining table. Maxime, Dumbledore and the other judges were off doing their thing, leaving their underlings to maintain order and keep school children from being too childish. While this would normally be a tall order on the level of herding cats from the back of a tractor, today they had little to do but watch the hundred-odd children as they gawked at the giant screen. They were currently enjoying a replay of yesterday's events-Rose's brush with the Praxis, the Trio doing what wizards did, the running commentary of Lee Jordan as he waxed eloquently about everything from the general state of society through to Rose's use of firelegs.

It was all very exciting to those watching-and a little boring to those watching the watchers. Minerva paid little attention to them. She'd visited enough muggle families in her day to recognise the enraptured look on her charges' faces, though it was fairly disconcerting the way her mind kept thinking about how their blank stares were directed at _her_. Overall, about a three out of ten on the Hogwarts' weirdness scale in her professional opinion.

Severus was busy coating his toast with that weird butter he made for himself over summer, its rainbow-coloured surface shimmering in the early morning sunshine. Apparently, it contained all the nutrients and magical augmentations a wizard or witch needed to get through the day, all kept compact enough that two slices of toast meant you could skip lunch and dinner if needs be. No matter what anyone else said, though, Minerva would never touch the stuff. After all, Pomona was still working off the excess fat one of Severus's faulty batches had cursed her with. And Minerva was too proud a witch to risk her waistline on a dare. It just wasn't done that way.

She sipped her cup of Lady White tea with relish. Oh, this was truly the nectar of the gods. Much better than that coffee stuff most of the students and house elves swore by.

One of her cubs lost the glazed look on his face. Who was it-ah, wait, red hair, freckles, looked vaguely familiar. Was always late in her class. Come on old girl, think! It can't be _that_ hard-right, Weasley! But which one? Oh wait, there was the other one. A twin-twins! That's right, Fred and George! Unforgettable, those two. Troublemakers of the finest sort. Now why were they staring at her-_the screen_ in horror? Wait, there was another, this time one of the Durmstrang students that hadn't figured out the colour coding scheme probably. They were meant to eat with the Slytherins, not the badgers. Odd that. He was staring at the screen like it'd killed his puppy. Murmurs started spreading through the ranks. The odd shout could be heard from the tables. Uh oh. Danger Professor McGonnagall, danger! She stood up, putting her hands out in that calming gesture of hers that worked nine times out of ten-and was summarily ignored.

What was going on?

Against her better judgement, she turned around to see what was bothering her students and stumbled. The picture revealed a ruined room that'd been charred and battered by what seemed to be a dragon. Four figures ran away from something that seemed to be all tentacles, firing spells behind them as the thing's mouths opened and cried out in a ghastly shriek made up of pain and hunger. There was a caption underneath the picture-_hostages in peril!_

Minerva saw red. There were two Hogwarts students and one Hogwarts alumnus participating as hostages in this task. Three people she knew and cherished, even if she sometimes had trouble remembering their names. Fighting for their lives. In Albion. Because of her boss.

Albus and her were going to have _words _when he got back. Oh yes indeed.

* * *

"So how are we gonna do this?" Cho asked the room in general. Hannah was now awake and enjoying a cup of conjured coffee, Gabrielle was busy clutching to Hermione's leg like it was the last steady hold she had on reality and Hermione was working her way through her coat's wards and enchantments, re-casting wards, correcting flaws and generally making sure the day's activities, whatever they ended up being, didn't cause it to fall apart at the seams.

After a lengthy silence, the bushy-haired Gryffindor looked up. "What?"

"How are we going to do this?" The surly Hufflepuff asked wearily. She was only on her third cup of conjured coffee, after all. It took time to work. "Since you're, you know, action girl and stuff."

"Wait, me?" Hermione asked in wry amusement. "You're seriously considering asking me for advice?"

"Yes, you jumped-up bookworm, _you_. Since you got us into this mess-"

"Hey!" Cho snapped. "What she means to say is that you have _saved us from a gruesome fate, for which we thank you_." she stated edgily whilst staring at Abbot, who just sighed and rolled her eyes. "and that we now need someone to save us from a worse one. And, well, you've got experience with this stuff. As you are a, you know, a Gryffindor and all."

"Oookay. Why thank you Cho, Hannah." She said, beaming at the two. "First time anyone's thanked me for saving their lives-"

"Happen often then?" Hannah sniped from her corner.

"No, generally only once or twice a year." Hermione admitted, leaving Abbot blinking and muttering '_is she serious_' at Cho, who nodded. Ravenclaws kept abreast of their own, no matter what house they happened to be in. "Anyway, thank you, but are you sure? I mean, I've got a plan, but it isn't a particularly good one."

"That's all right." Chang said happily. "See, I don't have a plan either."

"And neither do I." Hannah admitted in a pained voice. "So tell us about this grand plan of yours, Granger."

"We keep on going."

There was a minute's silence at the words. "You know," Cho said "you didn't have to lie about having a plan-"

"But that is the plan!" Hermione exclaimed, wounded at the insinuation. "It will work, you know."

"_Let's go farther down, they'll never catch us there!_" Hannah said in a mockery of Hermione's slightly nasal voice before laughing. "Because that worked so well _yesterday_."

"Well it did!" Granger snapped at the black-hearted & gold-plated bitch. "Or are you still sitting in your cell, waiting for them to come for you, huh? _Why do you think they only chained your ankle to a wall_?" She snarled. Gabrielle squeezed her calf muscle hard at the tone. "Ah!_ Desolee ma cherie, mais je suis en plein milieu d'une discussion ici. On parlera apres, d'acc?"_

"_D'acc_." The little girl answered in a whisper.

"Come off it 'Hermy'. We're here because of the tournament, of course." Hannah stated with confidence.

"Oh yeah? Are we really? Then explain why they thought that locking us _in a dungeon_, _alone_ and without the ability to defend ourselves using magic. Because _that_'s an explanation I'd _love_ to hear."

"Look, guys-" Cho began, but stopped as Hermione made a swiping gesture in her direction.

"I don't give a shit about your problems Abbot. I don't care about your petty delusions about being safe in this fucking world just because you have good looks and a gift in charms work. What _I_ care about are _facts_. _Facts_ like the odds of all the hostages being female being close to nil. Or do you really think that you're worth more in _dear Vicky's_ eyes than his own little brother? Or that Fleur has a ton of close friends that won't cause half the shit-storm that endangering both the heir apparent _and_ the heir presumptive to the Delacour clan for the purposes of a _fucking game_? How about this one-we were all alone in the dungeons. _Fact_. We couldn't use magic. _Fact_. We were defenceless against anyone with a wand and the motive to use it. _Fact_. Now consider these facts, Hannah Abbot, and ask yourself what the odds are of you, the pretty little Hufflepuff, being rescued _before_ one of our lovely abductees decided to have a little play time with you. Consider how likely it is that someone would have heard you screaming your lungs out before they were finished with you and decided to dump you on the lower levels if they botched the subsequent obliviation. Consider the _facts_, Hannah, before running your mouth off again, you stupid fucking bitch." Hermione said in an ironclad voice.

Cho sighed. "Alright, then, now that _that's_ sorted, can we get back on topic here?" She looked at Granger. "Hermione, you said your original plan was good. Can you elaborate?"

"Well, it's like I said yesterday-there are tunnels leading outwards on the lower levels. If we can get to them and make our way through one of them, we're bound to get out by the end of the day."

"The only problem with this being the monsters, I'm guessing." Cho said sarcastically.

"Well, not really. All we need to do is torch the corridors ahead of us with a directed _incendio._ That should take care of the nasties."

"Hmm..." Chang tapped her wand against her chin. "Alright Miss Granger, it may not be much of a plan, but you have my backing. And you, Gabby?"

"_Oui M'dame." _The girl said quietly.

"Three out of four. Not bad. Guess that's us sorted then. When are we leaving?"

"Well, there's still the enchantments I intend to cast on you guys to keep you moderately safe and Gabby's carrying harness to figure out, but that should be it. Give me an hour?" Hermione asked.

"An hour? You got it Granger. I'll just go and comfort Hannah while you sort out Gabrielle." Cho said.

Hermione stole a glance at Abbot and sighed as she saw the horror-stricken look of realisation on the girl's face. "Right-o. Snap her out of it. You've got about twenty minutes, okay?"

"That's all I'll need, don't worry."

* * *

"_-you stupid fucking bitch!_"

Minerva sighed at the shocked look on Fudge's face. "B-but..." The Minister of Magic sputtered. "But we'd _never_-" and then stopped.

Alastor Moody grinned in approval at the mirror. "I like 'er." The grin turned into a smirk. A moody smirk was not a pretty thing to see. "Good at DADA too. Can I 'ave 'er?"

"No Moody, bad Moody!" Nymphadora 'don't call me that' Tonks said with a mock scowl. "Only one partner per Auror, them's the rules."

"'Oo said anything about that?" He asked quizzically.

"Well..." Tonks said, shrugging.

"Nah, lass. I want 'er as an apprentice."

"What?" The metamorphmagus squeaked. "Why her and not me?"

"Less work lass. She's got good instincts that one. May only take ten years to knock the edges off. You, it'd take forever. Literally."

"Knock it off minions." Amelia Bones slurred grumpily as she sipped her tea with a frown. "I'm not in the mood."

"Mugged Dung again Boss?" Moody asked.

"If you were anyone else Alastor..."

"Good thing I'm me then." The Master Auror smirked again.

"Shut up. Anyway, you've probably guessed why we're here." She said, waving at the big screen.

"Damage control? Please say it's damage control." Fudge whined. "My office is up to its ears in howlers already. And Albus is being his usual bloody self."

"Trouble in paradise Corny?" Moody stated archly.

"Not a word more out of either of you." Bones stated, pointing at Moody and his partner in crime...fighting. "This is serious."

"Indeed." Fudge intoned. "My approval ratings've dropped by five points in the past hour alone.

"Boss?" Amelia said carefully.

"Yes?"

"It's not that type of delicate. Now, how many of you have been briefed about the site the hostages are kept in? Minions excluded, of course."

The other figures sitting around the round table were silent. Minerva raised her hand, eliciting a raised eyebrow from Madame Bones. "Professor?"

"I do Albus's paperwork. Snuck a peak is all." The deputy headmistress admitted.

"Alright. Care to do the honors then?"

"No." She said flatly. "Not on this one."

"Wise choice professor." Bones cleared her throat. "Anyway, for the erudition of the rest of you lot, I _could_ give you a rather lengthy & pointless run-down of the details, but brevity, I've found, has always had a clarity of its own." She sighed. "The location where the hostages are held isn't _just_ in Albion. It's in Morgane Le Fay's eternal tomb."

The silence that followed that statement lasted for a while. Amelia just smiled. "I thought so. I'll just go ahead and send as many Aurors I can spare then, shall I?" More silence. "Good, thank you. Now then gentlement, this was a fun little gathering and all, but I have to be going. All that pesky work stuff to do, so few minions to shunt it off onto. Minions, Boss, to me. We have work to do. Goodbye gents, professor."

And, with that, Amelia walked out of the room. McGonnagall found it all rather amusing. Now, to find Albus and give him what for...

* * *

Patches of dry land started to peak out of the sea of ice the swamp had turned into. The slopes started to get steeper and steeper. Glimpses of forest started to peak out of the marshy landscape. Small rivulets started to become more prevalent, getting bigger and more violent as the ponds got smaller and smaller. Rose was coming up to a spot on the map designated as the 'waterfall wall'. The end of the marshlands were in sight. Normally, this was a cause for celebration, for a well-earned pause.

Rose didn't give a shit about pauses anymore. She ran.

The sun was mounting ever higher into the sky. A dense layer of fog pervaded the undergrowth while misty curls of water vapour steamed off the ice. Down in the valley, it'd dissipate come midday. Up on the plateau, it was only getting started.

She needed to beat the fog. If it got too thick, she was dead. Because if it got too thick, she'd never see the demiguise coming. Not that she _would_, but chances were that they'd use the fog as a distraction to get close enough to do whatever it was they did. Time to forget stealth. Forget sneaking around the obstacles. Forget catching your own food, finding shelter for the night and getting a relaxing sleep before going off and rescuing Hermione. Forget the training, the years of fighting alone against the world, where stealth and surprise won the day. Forget it all. Because now, her enemy was a master of stealth, hunting and human behaviour.

Because she was being hunted by a pack of Demiguise.

Demiguise are legendary beasts. Said to exist only in myth, coming across one was almost a guaranteed death sentence. They were said to be cursed wizards from the dawn of time, driven insane by isolation and invisibility, forever walking the earth without ever truly dying.

Rubbish of course. They weren't cursed. They _wanted_ immortality. And they got it.

Demiguise fur hides its bearer from death. Ever thought of the consequences of that? As long as you wear the fur, Death cannot see you. And what Death cannot see, Death cannot claim. You are, as long as you wear the fur, technically immortal.

But here's the caveat – that which cannot die, can never truly live. And that which you cannot see, cannot really understand, you cannot interact with.

A Demiguise was human once, long ago. They remember every second of being human, for it's the last true memory of life they ever had. After transforming, they lived in a state where only those who'd become like themselves could interact with them, but nobody else. Tortured by the very means of their immortality, they slowly lost control of their cognitive functions and truly became human animals, things that had the aggressive instincts of a human with none of the limiters to stop them doing what they wanted.

There was only ever one case recorded of a wizard killing a Demiguise. That wizard was Ignotus Peverell. The results are a bit skewed, though-while only one Demiguise had ever fallen at the hands of a wizard, hundreds of cases of wizards & witches being found eaten, skinned alive or worse are attributed to the beasts.

And she was being hunted by a fucking _pack_ of the bastards. Her rifle was useless in this situation-how can you keep the target at range if you cannot see it? How do you kill the invisible with a rifle? It was dead weight, but she didn't ditch it. Useless against silent, invisible hunters it may be, but they weren't the only beasts out here. Centaurs, Werewolves, Acromantula had crossed her path in earlier months. The rifle worked just fine against _them_.

So she ran. The fog was closing in. If it got too thick, she'd have to slow down. If she slowed down now, there were few doubts about how the day'd end for her. She needed to get out of here, find an easily defendable space and prepare for yet another last stand. Typical. She just hoped it didn't turn out to be hers this time.

Finally, she hit the forest line proper. Her breaths came in ragged chunks. She'd have to slow down soon. She followed the deep roaring noise coming from her left, ever deeper into the dark forest. This wasn't like the swamp-the swamp, for all its murky glory, let _some_ light filter through. This section of the forest was just dark. Rose slowed, sighed in frustration and started filtering through the vision options on her specs. The forest turned all the colours of the rainbow as a combination of thermal, magical and light amplification charms kicked in, rendering the world in a sharp contrast of psychedelic colours. Huh, well that was new. Now, to test it against daylight. She turned around and looked at the swamp she just traversed. There it was, in the strange hues a kindergarten student on a sugar high'd pick to colour it in.

Well, that and a huge number of blurry outlines slowly and patiently moving towards her position. Rose turned around, ran and started to grin.

_Gotcha_.

* * *

Dungeons, as a rule, don't get much in the way of light. Being underground, the sun couldn't touch them. Being in a keep, under a heavy layer of stone & rock, meant that the more common varieties of naturally occurring glowing fungi didn't flourish there-lots of water, but not enough in the way of useable bacteria to feed off.

So it would come as a shock to many wizards & witches that their ancestors had come up with an extremely efficient means of lighting up the lower levels of a dungeon; fireflies. And not the muggle variety either-these fireflies glowed all year round. A single one only gave off a weak source of lighting, barely enough to match the flame of a matchstick. But in packs, they lit up the dark & gloomy corridors like the sun. They were also pretty much self-sustaining. A little bit of shit here, moss there, maybe the carcass of an unlucky prisoner or two every couple of years and they were all set to last forever. Alternatively, rats or other, dumber insects worked just fine.

The Aurors were aware that they'd attracted an audience back home. Their charges had absconded in the dead of night, blasting their way down below the dungeons in a blaze of furious magic that'd barely rated any attention at all from the guards on duty, focused as they were on patrolling the outer battlements looking for trouble.

The damage they'd done, though, _hadn't_ escaped the Auror's notice, however. The Mausoleum was, despite its modest outwards appearance, built along the lines of a massive hall roughly the size of Hogwarts itself on the ground floor, the entire structure lined with vaulted beams that criss-crossed the hall from one side to the other in eternal remembrance to the witch who'd sacrificed her life severing the kingdom of Albion from the world around it. The beams were made of what appeared to be a mix of marble and solid silver, but were in fact composed of heavily enchanted Mithril and mineral crystals spun into a mesh overlaying a core composed of solid carbon. This was the true achievement of the mausoleum-each of those beams was a marvel of magical engineering, capable of bearing loads unheard of on earth itself. They were, each of them, the size of a muggle skyscraper and twice as sturdy. They'd stood for close to a thousand years and bore silent testimony to the skills of the generations that built & set up magical Britain in its golden days. Unbreakable, it was once thought. They were tasked with holding up the mausoleum, containing its runic wards, protecting the burial chambers from intruders and showing off the awesome power of magic for all who made it this far.

Only, the beams had started to crack.

Nobody noticed anything at first, really, the guards on duty being too focused on their jobs to pick up on the odd fissures steadily snaking their way up some of the massive pillars, the groans echoing through the vast chamber, the rumbles starting to build. Until the captain looked up and saw the dark lines spreading and groaned. After all this was over, he and Granger were going to have a _talk_ about blowing up valuable landmarks close to the heart of the wizards' culture. Not that he didn't sympathise (muggleborn Aurors tended to _dislike_ places that reminded them of Malfoy Manor. Shocker), but really.

But, first things first, he needed to go and retrieve the hostages before it was too late. Something told him that, should she somehow manage to penetrate the actual burial chambers of Morgane La Fey, that nothing much would matter to him or his aurors anymore on account of the castle collapsing on top of their heads.

And the girl was well on her way to doing _just that_.

So he raced down through the dungeons and onto the lower levels, Granger's backpack and other odd bits & bobs the Auror guard had confiscated prior to shackling her to the wall, trusting his enchanted map and the damage left behind by the awesome foursome to catch up with them.

He enchanted the fireflies to float in front of him as he ran, hoping against hope that they weren't too far ahead.

* * *

"You will not be talking about this ever again. To anyone. Understand?"

"Yes, Viktor." Two voices said in a monotone, desperately trying to stave off the boredom that hiking their way down a strangely well-maintained trail was bringing them. The only sounds they'd heard so far came from the local birdlife. Not a single monster was to be seen anywhere since they'd set off a couple of hours ago. It made Viktor nervous. And when nervous, Viktor tended to babble. A lot. Which drove Cedric round the bend something fierce.

"Alright, I will trust you with this for now. We should probably find somewhere to sit down for lunch and check our progress. We've got to reach the hostages by tomorrow if we're to get back before our time's up." he uttered in that curt, emotionless burst that made his babbling even harder to endure than the Hufflepuff Hymn, which consisted entirely of 'uhhh... ummm... what, can you repeat that please?'.

"Why by tomorrow?" Fleur asked, her interest piqued despite the well-concealed spike of unease that'd been skewering more and more of her patience in the last hour.

Cedric sighed, checking the time on his watch for the umpteenth occasion since waking up that morning. His big toe hurt. His balance was out of whack. Probably still frost-bitten from this morning, much like most of his face had been. He tried his best to stop thinking about it. "Because," He said slowly "we don't know what awaits us when we reach them. Do we have to fight our way out with them? Are there riddles to solve if they are to be freed? Is it an execution or a birthday party that we're walking towards? We don't know. That extra day will come in handy... if we can get to them by then, that is. Hey Vicky!" he intoned playfully. "How far until we can stop for a rest honey-buns?"

Viktor's scowl didn't scare Cedric. Honestly. No matter what Fleur had to say when she'd stopped laughing herself silly. "Fuck you, Badger Queen."

"Hey, I'm not the were-girl here, girl." Damn, this was fun. Even if it was a bit scary. Actually, it was plenty scary, the way Viktor pinned him with that glare of his. But still fun.

Krum sighed. "Not that far, actually. We should be getting close now." Fleur just kept giggling.

Cedric smiled to himself and went back to checking out the surrounding area for threats. Oh, how he wished he'd mastered that hyper-sensory charm in class! He hated having to rely on Fleur to sniff out any unseen threats to their well-being. Most wizarding naturalists knew that there were plenty of creatures that had the power of invisibility, but they were far too good at evading wizards and magic in general, so he only knew of one possible invisible threat to the group-other than a cranky Rose. He hated having to rely on Fleur. The Veela was just so... so... flighty. He giggled involuntarily. Damn, pull yourself together Ced! He actually found that funny! He-ah, hang on, that looks like the clearing Krum had talked about. "Hey guys! This the clearing?"

Krum agreed while Fleur darted in, eagerly looking for a spot to park her sore rump on for an hour or two. Walking was exhausting. Fighting Dragons was tiring. Who knew? She sure did now.

* * *

"Can we stop for a while?" Cho asked. "I need time to recoup after that last corridor."

"Yeah, that one was a doozy." Hermione agreed absent-mindedly as she leant against a handy wall and shook off the numbness left behind by overly frequent casting. "What was that ward anyway?"

"Trip ward." Hannah whispered as she glanced around fearfully, her _lumos_ just spreading more shadows around rather than illuminating anything useful. "You trip it, it trips you back. Usually has something nasty for you to trip into as well."

"Yeah, that pit of congealed tar looked nasty." Cho said, shaking out her wrists in cadence with Granger.

"That wasn't tar." Hermione noted. "I took a close look at it. It was _pitch_, with a fire spell overlaying it. If you'd tripped into it and broke the surface, the embedded _incendio_ would have set anything in the hole on fire. And pitch _sticks_."

"Eurgh." Gabrielle said. "_C'est horrifique_."

"Yep!" Hermione agreed.

"How do you know that, Gr-Hermione?" Hannah asked.

"Malfoy." The girl growled. "Tried something similar, except it involved both pitch and bubotuber pus. Claimed it was a prank and got off, the bastard."

"Ouch." Chang said. "That sucks."

"Yeah." Granger agreed. "Especially when he mysteriously fell into his own trap the next day. Too bad someone'd disabled the spell trigger beforehand."

"Wow, way to go you!" Abbot exclaimed.

"While a nice attempt at sucking up," Hermione said semi-teasingly, "I can definitely say that it wasn't me that pushed him in."

"Well no." Cho agreed. "Why push when a tripping jinx works so much better?" She snorted at the wry look Hermione threw her way before the bushy-haired witch started giggling. "Right."

"Anyway, much as I hate to interrupt this break of ours, but we need to get going." Hannah said.

"Oh?" Cho said, looking at the other witch oddly. "And why is that?"

"Because I'm hungry and there may be some food in the kitchens."

"Hmm, okay." Hermione said. "So we're travelling deep inside the castle of doom, gloom and monstrosities. We're not that far ahead of things, which means we need to hurry if we're going to make it out of here alive. And now we need to find the kitchens in the off-chance of finding anything edible where everything tells us that this part of the building hasn't been occupied for centuries. How are we going to do that? Ideas?" She shook her head at their faces. "Honestly, if you know something I don't, I'm all ears. Pretty hungry here too, indeed hungry enough to test Gamp's Laws of transfiguration."

"Well…" Hannah said. "This is presumably a magical castle. What if we tried to find a house elf?"

"And because old magical castles had quarters specifically to house house elves-" Cho's eyes widened. "That's a brilliant idea Hannah! It's-"

A muffled roar interrupted their tirade with a hammer blow.

"Well shit." Hermione summarized the group's feelings. "Any ideas about what that was?"

* * *

The veela was debating with Krum about whether or not they should try a different path before it started snowing again like it had the night before. The sky was currently clear, but all three knew that that would change extremely rapidly once they hit what was left of the enchanted Orchards. Weather & temperature regulation spells were notoriously long-lived, often lasting for a lot longer than the environment they were cast in. A number of Oases were originally magical farms that had paid a little bit extra for spellcasting. The resulting charms had been operating since before the last ice age. This made old orchards such as the one they wanted to cross extremely dangerous, since they were a popular refuge for many a magical creature and, therefore, prime hunting grounds for magical predators. Once they hit the area, there was little doubt that rain and other nasties would ensue and they should probably prepare accordingly.

"And I am telling you, just _confringo_ing our way through is not going to work." The blonde girl sniffed, clearly not impressed with the Bulgarian's reasoning abilities. "It takes far too much power to cast that spell that many times that quickly, power we'll need when the predators come looking for us."

"Predators will be a non-issue out there if we clear a path this way." Krum said, waving a hand in irritated dismissal. Fleur sighed inwardly as she silently bid him to carry on with his argument. "For one thing, the loud noise, the shockwave and the shrapnel should be enough to deal with any stray animals."

"Yeah, but here's the thing, Viktor; _we'll_ be hit by shrapnel too if we do this." Fleur frowned. "And wood splinters hurt, I can tell you that."

The Bulgarian Seeker sneered at her. How cute. She sneered right back. "Are you a witch or not? Shield!"

"Uh huh." she said skeptically. "Because _Protego _does _such_ a good job at stopping small objects going really fast."

"It's _wood_ shrapnel! Easy to stop, easy to deflect!"

"No, Viktor, it's nowhere near as easy as you think it is. You're thinking wood splinters. I am thinking what's left of a small tree, hitting us at close to the speed of sound, while on fire. The drain from the shielding spell would be immense."

"Use the _protego aegis _then! Perfect for this kind of thing!"

"NOT THE POINT VIKTOR!" She breathed. "The point is that, _confringo_ or _protego_, we'll exhaust ourselves if we even get halfway through."

"Then what would you suggest, _princesse_?" He bit out, his temper being frayed by the confrontational blonde. Clearly, she still underestimated the potential he saw in this group. To him, they not only could, but would make it across without issue. If he'd listened to her suggestions yesterday, they'd all be dead.

"What about flying?" A small voice asked from his spot on the ground. Cedric looked at the two of them. "Why don't we just fly over? And before you ask-" He said, raising his hands in anticipation, "I've got a broom with me."

"_Ah oui,_ great idea Cedric!" The blonde false-cheered. "And 'ow are we going to fit three people on one sports broom, eh?" She smirked at the stricken look the Hufflepuff gave her. "Thought so."

"It is quite a good idea." Krum ventured, stroking his chin. "But it will be crowded, yet could be done with sticking charms, and it leaves us at the mercy of airborne predators. Well done, Cedric."

"Yes, well done at suggesting something that could get us _killed_."

"Oi! Calm it, you!" Diggory shouted, pointing a finger at her. "All we've gotten from you for the past ten minutes is bitch, moan, but I don't wanna! Well little miss French bitch, either you come up with a plan of your own or you SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

The echo bounced across the clearing, the words still clear in the dead silence that came afterwards. Cedric, clearly panicking at his own behaviour, Krum, staring at the Hufflepuff in astonishment, and Fleur, regarding the two of them with a considering gaze.

"Okay, my suggestion is zat we 'ave one of us mount ze broom, reach a spot on ze far side of ze forest and _apparate_ back 'ere to side-along ze two of us." She said carefully, a small smile forming on her lips even as Cedric's blush turned his head purple.

Krum just whistled. "Wow. The Slytherins warned us not to anger the Hufflepuffs, but wow."

"I agree." the Veela said. "Eet ees distrurbingly close to ze feeling of being attacked by a duck... and losing."

Somehow, Cedric's blush got darker. Krum just laughed.

* * *

Rose panted as she broke through the tree-line at a dead run, sword out and dripping with black gunk. Tangling vine. Bubotuber bushes. Venomous tentacula. Strangling weeds. Man-sized venus fly-traps. Plants that could kill you and-the insects that lived off them. That hadn't been fun. She didn't dare draw her gun in the forest for risk of the noise attracting any more predators her way and the knife wasn't large enough to act as a machete, so sword it'd been.

She staggered as her head swam from some of the more vicious toxins she'd been both hit by and covered in. This wasn't good. Not good at all.

The hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention as her metabolism went into overdrive. She felt herself lurch and fall to the ground, her breath coming in short pants now. Her limbs burned and shook uncontrollably, sending spasms of pain ripping through her system.

Slowly, ever so slowly, she brought her right hand under a modicum of control, reducing the agonising contractions into a gradual twitch even as the left side of her body started to go numb. Reaching into the right hand pocket, she withdrew a syringe filled with what Hermione'd called 'just in case' potions, a battlefield concoction a dude named Lupin'd come up with during the last civil war these guys'd had. Unlike a bezoar (a stone lifted from a goat's stomach. Eww), this dealt with any wounds as well as poisons working through the victim's system. She didn't _want_ to use it. She only had three of them. But she couldn't move or feel her legs anymore, which meant that it was either this or death.

She lifted her twitching right hand up to her mouth, plastic covering the pointy metal bit first. She bit on the cap, taking it off. She then put her thumb on the stopper at the other end, letting the twitch throw some of the precious liquid onto the grass-which started to smoke. Huh.

Then, she aimed the syringe towards the side of her torso, roughly where she thought her kidneys were, and jammed the needle into the soft tissue. Her hand twitched, making the needle move around as she slowly injected the concoction into somewhere she hoped would turn out to be useful even as she moaned in pain.

It worked. Fabulously. All her nerve endings suddenly caught fire as a mix of blood & bile started to pool in her mouth.

She tried screaming, but only managed a pained gargle as her internal juices went down the wrong way.

* * *

Blaise paled at the sight. "What in the world was that?"

"That, oh best beloved," Daphne intruded snidely. "Was what happens when you take on some of Sprout's nastier beasties without the right protections."

Malfoy smirked.

* * *

The first sign that something had just gone badly wrong came from Fleur. Her and Krum were sitting tight, both sets of eyes scanning the dense underbrush that ringed the clearing for any hidden threats. Krum was getting bored; Cedric had come and gone twice in the past hour, reporting in on any suitable landing sites he found during his airborne scouting sortie. Both he and Fleur had vetoed the first two and given a probable maybe on the last one he'd found, provided that he could find a trail close to that point they could use until nightfall. Now all they had to do was wait.

It was hard going. And boring as hell. The best he could do was a bare skim of the underbrush, what with the tall grass within the clearing probably concealing more immediate dangers for the two. Fleur was slated to go first and secure their landing site for them while Krum would cover their departure by setting the clearing on fire after leaving. The last thing he wanted was having to run from that strange... _thing_ that had pursued them the day before. So here he was, trying to keep as much attention on the area around him as he could, knowing that he would have to be alone for around fifteen minutes when Ced came to pick up the French Veela, so he should probably get used to it.

A soft hiss drew his attention to the Veela. Fleur's eyes were wide even as her nostrils started flaring. This was not good. "Can you smell it yet, Viktor?"

"No" the stoic Bulgarian stated flatly, wand already twirling into an ever-ready duelling configuration Headmaster Karkaroff had taught him on the sly. "What am I looking for?"

"Death." The blonde half-human stated weakly. "The stench of Death."

"Okay." He said, opting to move his hands into a position that allowed for a fast-cast of the Avadas. A Kedavra or a Mortiis every one and a half seconds was not something to sneeze at. He looked around the glen, the cheerful greens surrounding them at odds with both the clouded sky and the suddenly silent forest behind the shrubs. It was as if the whole area started holding its breath. He sniffed at the air, looking for that sickly-sweet smell that spoke of silenced screams and forgotten graves. There! A bare hint of a scent, more mould than rot, but there nonetheless. "Smelled it. Direction?"

"Upwind from us." she stated, gulping. "Won't be long now."

"Agreed." He held his breath, listening for any tell-tale signs that whatever was coming their was about to attack. Instead, he heard-clanking? "Heard something. Sounds like metal."

Fleur nodded, having evidently heard the same. _Clank_. "There!" She shouted, pointing her wand at a dark patch of forest. _Clank. _Viktor spun around, facing the direction he'd heard the sound come from.

He and Fleur were back to back. Krum frowned. "Pincer. Coming from both sides." _Clank-kank_, came from both his left and right, the sound of metal on metal growing louder and more frequent by the minute. "Sorry, was mistaken. Coming from everywhere. Ideas on what they could be?"

"Non. No metal beasts I know of hunt like this."

"Too far north anyway. Metal animals die from exposure up here. What could it be?"

"Let's wait and see."

"Agreed."

Neither wasted the time they were afforded by the slow pace of the attack. Fleur dug up the earth around them with a twirl of her wand, giving the two magicals a sand bank to shield themselves with should any projectiles come their way. Krum transfigured the tall grass into rows of silver & wooden spikes, plucking them out of the ground and planting them into the pit the Delacour girl dug out. Fleur hit the sandbank with an overpowered compression charm whilst piling more and more dirt onto the shrinking mound, Turning the sandbank into a ring of dense stone. Krum hit the now-bare glade outside of their mini-fortress with layers of prank curses and sticking charms. Nothing caught out in the open should be able to move for a few seconds, more than enough for the stout bulgarian and the nimble avatar of nobility to cut them down.

The noise of metal hitting metal became a dull roar as the two worked frantically to prepare themselves against the unknown foe. Fleur sweated despite the cold weather. Krum's frown of concentration grew ever more intense as he worked, layering ever more devious and vicious magics one on top of the other even as he ran through and discarded a number of possible warding schemes that could help defend the pair without boxing them in against this unknown enemy. He just prayed that whatever it was didn't turn out to be a Shoggoth, a monster made of tarnished liquid metals that preyed on anything in its path, magic or not. He'd seen one once. He never wanted to see one again. He started working faster., vowing to kill himself if his fears turned out to be true.

Finally, a figure could be seen approaching them through the underbrush. It was... human? The darkened silhouette sure seemed to indicate this, even as the faint image resolved itself the closer the figure got. Fleur decided not to wait to find out what it was. "_Reducto_!" She yelled, the ball of spellfire streaking across the clearing at dizzying speeds. The spell collided with the target's head, resulting in the head disappearing with a loud SPLAT and the corpse of the humanoid falling to the ground "Ha! _Va te faire foutre, sale fils de pute_!"

"Nice shot." Krum said, whistling quietly. "Colourful language too."

"A lady is allowed 'er occasional foibles." She sniffed.

"Okay, me dumb Georgian. Me no know prissy French manners. _Confringo!_" BLAM "Me hit target with crude barbarian spell." He said, waving his hand towards the gap where a large tree used to stand.

"_Reducto! _You shall learn, _paysan_. Zey all do. _Reducto!"_

The spellfire stopped as the number of moving silhouettes dried up. The two combatants breathed a sigh of relief, using the seeming lull to gather themselves and pick out what other defences they should use, now that they had an idea what what they were fighting looked like. At least, that was the plan before the sound of rustling reached their ears.

A headless shadow stood up, followed by another. Followed by one skewered by a piece of wood as long as Viktor's arm. While they stared at something that simply should not be possible, the dozen attackers they'd felled had stood up and started hobbling their way into the clearing.

The first of the assailants stepped into the light. It looked like a human male, clad in anachronistic Roman armour, Gladius in the hand that hadn't been blown off by Krum's enthusiastic use of explosion curses. Only, where Krum expected to see bloody meat and bone sticking out of the spot where the thing's shoulder used to be, he saw a thin layer of skin burnt off, revealing a doll-like wooden joint sitting underneath it. The splintered wreckage was reforming in front of his eyes, the sap leaking out of the wound turning into new would centimetre by centimetre. Viktor's brath hitched. _It couldn't be..._

"Vickie!" Fleur said, her tone one of near panic. "What are zose... _things?_"

"They're wood puppets. Fire. Use fire. _Incendio noctem!" _Was all he said, his wand unleashing a stream of black fire that hit the three closest to his position. The wooden puppets shrieked with such a shrill intensity that Fleur fumbled her own flame curse, sending a stream of plasma at the point behind the targets she was aiming for. The forest lit up as the trees caught fire.

"_Mon Dieu!_" Fleur whispered as the flames drove away the darkness. Hundreds. There were hundreds of them, slack faces and eyeless sockets showing the wood behind the skin masks the puppets wore. The icy thrill of fear wound itself down her spine. They were all _looking at her_, their wooden gaze silently staring out at her even as they slowly shambled into the glade, their clothes sporting small fires from the nascent blaze they'd been walking through. The slack of the skin masks were as deceiving as the skin covering was. Beyond the expressionless, saggy flesh lay a malevolent intelligence her talents at evaluating emotions & intentions in others were sensing. Those faces hid the _hate_, such anger at these puny things that had dared trespass in its domain and would pay for that as others had before. Screw fear. She was sure that what she was feeling was terror. Pure, painful terror. "_Incendio!_"

* * *

Cedric knew that his friends & fellow contestants were in trouble the moment the smoke cloud started to rise from the green carpet zooming past below him. Not that he could do much but fret for the ten minutes it would take before he could get back and help them. He'd expected something like this to happen out here sooner or later really, but not at the point where he'd have to either take to the air or risk apparating onto a killing field.

The Weasley Twins could be real chatty when it came to the things those two had come across during their less-than-legal romps through Wizarding Britain's last magical wildlife preserve. There had been one outside of Cardiff, but that stretch of forest had been swallowed by muggle suburbia a couple of decades ago, which meant that all those magical creatures native to the Isles could only really live in peace in the Forbidden Forest, or the Dancing Forest as the locals called it. Which meant that every single nasty in the magical creatures books eventually wound up in this place. Though the forest was _huge_ thanks to the space expansion ward, that didn't mean that the odds of not encountering something incredibly lethal were about as slim as a muggleborn's survival chances at a Death Eater revel.

And the stretch they were currently in was the worst part of said forest. _The_ worst part, as a matter of fact. Apparently, prior to the nineteenth century, a bustling little community composed mainly of squibs and muggleborn had settled in the area, trying to eke out a living far from the oppressive government of the day. It'd been established for centuries, until one day, according to rumor, a wizard cut down a tree he wasn't meant to. The entire settlement vanished shortly thereafter, lost in the depths of the forest they were now tasked with traversing. Odds were that the things that were attacking them now were what'd caused the small village to die off without a trace.

He just didn't expect it on day two, though. Which was why he was now zooming at close to two hundred miles an hour towards an ominously orange-glowing cloud of smoke, his booted feet almost skipping across the forest canopy, he was flying that low. He just hoped that it wasn't Acromantula. There were always one or two of them that specialised in shooting websilk at airborne targets, trapping the prey and knocking them out of the sky in one go. Ending up as a spider's dinner after all this effort learning how to survive out in the Forest would be... _embarrassing_.

Probably not as embarrassing as being killed by Snow herself (and wasn't _that_ as un-Hufflepuffish an attitude as Cedric had ever embraced, but it was a justified one), but still embarrassing.

Scratch the acromantulas, he just hoped that his friends hadn't run into the Girl Who Lived To Scare The Shit Out Of One Cedric Diggory. He'd seen her performances and, while she was nice enough in person, he'd heard enough to know that, if she thought they were a threat, she would gleefully butcher them all without a second thought. Even if he ended up as spider shit, at least those eight legged bastards left something that could be buried. He wasn't sure that Rose would be as mindful as they were when it came to that.

His quidditch instincts made him duck for some reason. He was almost thrown off his broom when a black blur sped through the sky where his face would have been otherwise, the high-pitched ululating wail making him pale and quake in his mud-covered boots.

Harpies. The Cheetah of the skies. Stun their prey with hypersonic shrieks, gut them on their way down and drag the splattered carcass back to their communal nesting grounds for munchies. It didn't help that they could easily outrun his broom in a straight line. There was only one thing he could do.

He pulled the broom's nose skywards, trusting the Nimbus's saddling charm to keep him from falling off during the vertical climb. Fast on the dive they may be, but Harpies were notoriously slow when it came to climbing higher and higher while the broomstick just kept going at the same speed. The world around him turned from a green-blue-grey horizon to a greyish-blackish blob that stretched as far as the eye could see. The air started getting rarer, his uniform heating up as the temperature got colder. He started panting, the sudden heat and lack of oxygen reminiscent of being trapped under the heavy wintertime bed-sheets Hogwarts provided. The adrenaline that the initial awareness of being under attack provided got ramped up as his breath started growing more laboured, his panicking body forcing his brain into a state of frantic panic it took all his rudimentary occlumency skills to defeat. He levelled out.

The grey cloud of smoke was the size of a small inkblot from where he now sat, his conscious mind evaluating what to do now even as his spine melted into his pants when it realised that the only thing between a live Cedric in the air and a flat pancake of the-meatbag-once-known-as-Diggory variety was a piece of wood with bristles at the end. Long practice helped with suppressing that instinct, even if the addition of things trying to claw your eyes out made it a tad harder than it should be.

He ducked on instinct once again, feeling a talon break the skin on his back as another black blur sped past with a screech. A pair of Blood-red wings unfurled from the creature that was part shapely female and part avian (and wouldn't Fleur be pissed at the similarities there), the short body supported by a wingspan twice as long as a human was tall. Well, at least he now knew where the magical paralysing scream came from. Even from all the way up here, those looked like an _impressive_ set of lungs. Quite large, in fact. And those nipples were nice and perky, too. Wait...

The teenage boy shook himself, hoping to throw off the confusing messages of pain, panic & arousal wrestling for priority. Now was not the time to fantasise or, indeed, curl into a ball and start whimpering. His friends needed him. Besides, he doubted that that had been the only winged bitch hanging around using the clouds as cover. Time to bail. Now, how could he get out of this mess-the smoke cloud. He would aim for that.

His hind-brain quailed in fright as his broom pointed downwards at such a steep angle. For once, he agreed with his instincts. This _was_ the most terrifying time he'd ever had on a broom. His stomach bottomed out as his broom started its journey earthwards, to the sound of furious shrieking from above.

* * *

It was a sight straight out of the works of Dante. Bosch would have painted it, had he been into painting famous last stands. Snow-covered trees could be seen in the distance. The vibrant green clearing had disappeared in a haze of fire and a puff of smoke, leaving behind a glade painted with the dull browns of baked earth, the smoky greys of ash and the oily black of burning greenwood. Blotches of hissing pus formed around the puppet husks, the magical resins fighting a losing battle against the enchanted flames coursing through the charcoal blocks littering the area. The fire coursed farther through the forest behind the blackened stumps of murdered trees, hungrily feeding off the mulch and twigs dropped by the hulking behemoths whose bark split open, leaking sap that _screamed_ when the flames came for them.

The signs of the battle were spreading, filtering ever deeper back the way the contestants had come. In the centre of the inferno, two figures kept shooting off multi-coloured flame jets, desperately attempting to hold back the army shambling towards them.

Viktor was truly worried now. The defensive perimeter he and Fleur had established was working, but being eroded under the steady influx of puppets. The forest was on fire around them. The enemies were still coming. _Everything was on fucking fire_. He breathed deeply, the bubblehead charm flickering unsteadily as the oxygenation functions were taxed beyond their incanted limits. If he let the bubblehead drop, he'd be dead by asphyxiation in minutes. If he kept it up, he faced magical exhaustion within the next fifteen. So he had a twenty-minute timeframe in which to survive and come up with a solution. Fucking fun.

Fleur would probably hold out for a bit longer than he did, her more efficient casting skills compensating for her lower magical capabilities quite nicely. Krum, on the other hand, was a powerhouse, as the sheer number of _confringo_s and _incendia Maximii_ he'd thrown around could attest to. Huge magical reserves to draw from, sturdy tanking a specialty, just don't ask him to cast fiddly little charms with it. Unfortunately, the bubblehead charm was plenty fiddly and, therefore, more magically exhausting to maintain than even _Fiendfyre _was to him. Unfortunately, it was the only way he could survive for as long as he had in this version of Hell he'd landed into. Fifteen minutes left. Fleur whimpered behind him. Huh. Maybe he'd be the last to die after all.

Something touched his shoulder from behind. He looked behind at where he thought Fleur was, nodded once and then turned back to blasting puppets with sticky flame curses. He then did a double-take once his brain realised that it had, in fact, _not_ been Fleur who'd tapped on his shoulder, but a weary, battered and coal-faced Diggory grinning tiredly at him. "Aren't you a sight for sore eyes." he said to the other boy, chuckling manically as relief set in. "What's Fleur doing?"

"Repairing my broom. Ran into some Harpies on the way back." The Hufflepuff replied as he silently tossed _incendio_s down-range like they were going out of fashion. "She knew how. I didn't. We traded places."

"Harpies? They still up there?" Krum asked, worriedly scanning the sky for any sign of the hated birds. Georgia was infested with the damn things, so much so that you didn't dare go flying without back-up in that area.

"Lost them in the smoke column." Diggory grinned. "Don't think they appreciated crashing into the middle of the fire, though."

"Hah! Keep casting. Hey Delacour!" he shouted, drawing the Veela's attention. "Move it, will you? Otherwise we all die down here."

"_Va te faire, salopard!_ I am working as fast as I can!"

"Then work faster." The burly Bulgarian said. "I am getting tired."

"It's okay, I am almost finished. _Engorgio_!"

"Huh? Why did you cast that, Fleur?" Cedric asked, shielding his face from the glare of the fire raging around them.

"Because there won't be enough space for all three of us otherwise."

"_All three?_ But that broom's only meant for two people! And we agreed that we should apparate out!"

"Oh, don't worry Cedric. Both me and Fleur are too tired and leaving one of us behind would be condemning him or her to a painful death. This way, we don't need to leave you behind after all!" The cheeky reply came back.

"Oh ha, ha. Very funny." Was it Viktor, or did Cedric grow a sense of humour overnight? Krum wasn't sure at this point.

"_C'est pret!_ Let's go!"

* * *

Rose silently picked her way across the forest floor, trying to balance setting a fast pace against being as silent as she possibly could doing so. She was also sweating bullets, her jacket long since banished to the confines of the hyperdimensional backpack lest the sweat-soaked garment actually ice over in this bitterly cold, frost-logged environment. That potion she'd taken earlier may have saved her life, but it hadn't been kind in the process.

It was one thing Rose had had herself rigorously prepare for when it came to the 'sacrifice zone'; temporal fluctuations caused an abrupt and often non-sensical formation of large pockets of weather. It was why the Forbidden Forest had gained the moniker before a Goblin column of refugees came streaming into the area during the second world war, killed off the vast majority of sapients that lived in it-and then died under mysterious circumstances. It danced to its own tune, setting the seasons with the frenzied chaos that you either incorporated into your own jig around the forest or got out of the way of. Okay, so it wasn't the best of metaphors, but it worked for the dead people, so Snow was willing to follow along with it.

Rose was nervous. And angry. And elated. All at the same time. Which made her all hot and bothered in a good way.

She was being hunted again. By something or things that were far more intelligent than any animal had any right to be.

The Demiguise were back.

They were better than her peers had ever aspired to, maybe even as good as she was. Now that the initial fear had worn off (thanks to actually being able to _see _the enemy) and thanks to having almost died at the hands of the flora, she could appreciate being able to at least enact her revenge upon the fauna. Her mouth tasted the blood and ash of a large fire raging somewhere close by, the familiar taste of Death in the air barely covered by the scent of the forest. Her brain pounded away inside her skull, nauseous residue from the potions and instincts screaming for the blood of these things that had _dared_ try to equal her in a game she'd long since mastered. She honed in those instincts just as Sarge taught her to, but it was a near thing.

Her brilliant green eyes seemed to have acquired a distinct shade of sickly red as she used skills that had gone unused in months. The uniform white of the forest around her warped into hues of blue and mottled green, her own body an amalgam of greens, oranges and blood red now that she'd had to either discard her jacket or pass out from heat stroke, showing that she was radiating more heat into the environment than her body should be able to generate without killing her. She chanced a look behind her. There, moving stealthily from tree branch to tree branch, white, vaguely humanoid shapes stalked her in complete silence.

She chanced another look without her glasses-enhanced vision. Nothing.

Rose grimaced. If these were the ambush predators Miss Blue described, that meant that they would be attacking her the second they sensed weakness. They used infrared vision, probably related to hers somehow, but more developed if they could actually communicate using heat signatures. She couldn't shake them, the body heat and pheromones she gave off when getting excited prevented that. She would eventually tire out too much to continue, meaning that she would have to fight a pack of demiguise whilst exhausted if she tried. Running, as had been abundantly demonstrated before, didn't work. She frowned.

She had to outsneak these freaks. Outwitting prey was easy. Doing so with a predator was decidedly not as easy. She started stroking the shaft of her rifle in cogitation. What could she do? She took a chance when coming across a nearby clearing, unsheathing her sword whilst digging the map out of her trouser pocket. Weary of any further attacks, she scanned the tree line intently for any sign of movement in the upper reaches. Satisfied, she disengaged her magical vision and took a look at the piece of parchment. Fixing on her position, the map then proceeded to show her the most direct path forward. Yes, luck was on her side. _That_ would do nicely.

* * *

If there is one thing that sets the wizarding world apart from any other culture on earth, it's that its history is a lot closer to the surface than it is in any other culture. It's hard to obscure and rewrite history when the memories of the people that lived it are still hanging around and talking to people centuries, sometimes even millenia, later. They live in a society where the major events in their history are potentially a flubbed dimensional alteration spell away, where they could potentially still be alive two centuries in the future and where illnesses of mind and body are, normally, incredibly easy to deal with.

It should therefore come as no surprise that Harpies were still feared centuries after their last brush with magical society. Their blood-red wings, shapely bodies, sharp talons and razor-sharp teeth had seen many a mage being torn apart by the fiends. Their speed, vicious ambush attacks from above and paralysing scream did nothing to help their image as a purely dark creature. Many a budding Dark Lord had made the mistake of trying to recruit them only to end up as fodder for their chicks. Even Herpo The Foul, their rumoured creator, had shunned away from bringing them into his beastly army.

But there were ways of fighting them.

Beneath the stormy clouds of Scotland, a broom raced across the sky, seemingly trapped between the Dark Orange thunderclouds above and the suddenly white landscape underneath. One figure was leaning into the broom, his back bleeding away liberally as he tried to coax the protesting enchantments into giving him _more speed_. He was exhausted, the constant adrenaline rush, the wound that wouldn't stop gushing his lifeblood all the way down his pants and the concentration that boosting the enchantments with his own magic required leaving him perilously close to the point of exhaustion. His companions were no better, already drained by the horrors their little stratagem had unwittingly unleashed upon them being dogpiled by the magic sustained blasts of kinetic impact spells and bone-breaker curses they now unleashed on their angry foes. They couldn't communicate between each other, the noise-cancelling spell, while vital, curtailing any orders, warnings or tactical advice they could possibly give the others. They just had to trust one another. And hope it'd be enough.

Krum smiled as yet another pile of red feathers and dying female humanoid disappeared beneath the forest canopy. Fleur unleashed an air barrier above his head, causing the diving Harpy to run into a solid wall and splatter the three of them with blood & viscera. Cedric kept up the frantic search for a new landing spot, wiping the ash & grime raining from the sky now off his prized lucky goggles. _There!_ He elbowed Fleur in the ribs, silently screaming in pain as she instinctively slapped him in the back for his pretense and pointed at something closing fast. _A church spire._ A pat on the back was the only acknowledgement he could receive. He still wished he could have heard her say 'well done'. Being told that by a Veela was very uplifting after all. It was a guy thing.

* * *

So they'd found the kitchens. Auror Captain Andrews frowned, having finally caught up with the group just as they walked through into what the crude map on his map identified as a pantry, what would he do now?

Well, he was a Gryffindor, even after all this time. He stepped through the door and found a wand sticking into his lower back. Just as planned.

"You've been following us for a while now." Hermione Jane Granger, suspected Dark Witch and scary-sounding enough to be confused for one except for the whole him not being dead yet thing, whispered in his ear. He stilled, careful not to make any sudden movements as the other three girls appeared from behind a table at the far end of the room. "What I'd like to know is why."

"Well, a few things. First, you forgot your gear in your mad dash to escape." He said, tugging at the backpack slung across his shoulder. "Second, to actually brief you on why you are here. And third, to assure you that we mean you no harm."

"Right. As if I'd believe that." Granger stated. "Cho, Abbot, come and pat him down please-no sudden movements or you're dead, by the way. _Gabrielle, Cherie, va te cacher quelque part pour le moment, d'accord?_" The captain looked on as a small, blonde-haired chit nodded and took off for the far side of the room.

"I figured that." Andrews stated as he shifted around. "My wand's in a wrist holster on my left arm, by the way."

"And your backup? Where is it?" The girl hissed, digging the wand into his lower back.

"Right boot… You know, I can't wait for you to meet with Moody. Something tells me you'll get along like a house on fire."

The witch sighed. "Why does everyone say that?"

Andrews shrugged. "I like Vimes. The character really speaks to me, you know."

"I'm sure he does. Make sure to check his inner leg too, Hannah." Granger stated, snorting at the look the Abbot girl gave her (and him, but mainly her) at the order. "And no, you cannot molest him. Technically, he's the enemy unless he comes up with a damn good explanation."

"Okay, so my name is Johnathan Andrews, I'm an Auror captain currently assigned to guard the hostages for the tri-wizard tournament-which is you, by the way-and also tasked with ensuring your well-being until the designated participants get here."

"You've done a fine job of it so far 'Captain'." Chang remarked snidely as she extracted the second back-up wand from his inner trouser pocket.

"What can I say? I'm just gifted that way." The captain shrugged.

"Alright, that's about it, I think." Hermione stated as the two witches finished patting the Auror down a second time. "Go sit at that table-no sudden moves, mind-and talk. Cho, cover him while I inventory my gear please."

Andrews sighed. It was going to be a long day. Then again, he was technically with the hostages, which could be considered progress. Yippee.

* * *

Rose trudged on under a burning sky, the snow of ash and the flickering orange-red sky telling her that it wasn't just the burning rays of the sun that were lighting up the way for her. She sped up slightly. Twilight was fast approaching, and if the Demiguise were ever going to make their move, it would be after sundown.

The bastards hadn't let up. They'd been trailing her for hours, one team relieving another relieving another. She knew that she couldn't really shake them, but that hadn't stopped her from trying. She'd gone off the path, climbed steep mountainous hills and crossed a number of iced-over rivers in her quest to escape the invisible enemies trailing her. Always, there would be another team waiting to trail her wherever she emerged. She felt cheated. The wand had never mentioned that they could _do_ that. _I didn't know_. The hoarse whisper came to her. _This is new. Unexpected. Bad._ She snorted. Bad was an understatement.

She'd put on a heavy winter coat once the situation settled, the heat that came from fear and excitement fading with the acquisition of a plan. That, combined with her cross-country trek and copious short-cutting through dense underbrush and over tricky hillsides had left her feeling the strain of her day-long walk. She was sweating and, without the heat, that sweat eventually turned ice-cold, making her irritable and drowsy. And the _fucking weather_ just got worse with that _fucking firestorm_ raging somewhere close by.

She was close, she knew it. But she was also cutting it far closer than she had any right to. She wasn't Captain Panem after all, she needed to rest, and soon, damn the consequences.

Which is when she saw the outline of a church... and a broomstick she'd seen Cedric practice with sometimes. They'd had a broomstick with 'em all this time. She could have stayed with them and hitched a ride. It just wasn't fucking _fair_.

* * *

"Are you sure about this?"

The church wasn't nearly as grand an affair as it had appeared to the exhausted trio's eyes. The outside had looked much the same as when the town had been abandoned, its all wooden frame standing as impassive and permanent a statement to the ingenuity of medieval craftsmen as the day it had been built. The inside, on the other hand, was a different story. Where once lush tapestries had dominated the ceiling, depicting whatever sacred events the local religion had worshipped, now played host to fraying bits of cloth held up by old spiderwebs. The inner wall, while still carved out of stone, now had ice crystals growing over centimetres-thick moss, their combined appearance one of a ruined temple than the inside of a still-standing structure. The pews, not benefiting from the building's enchantments, had rotted away to piles of meal covering the stone flags.

And, where an altar of obsidian still stood in defiance to the entropy around it, three figures could be seen crouching over a hole in the floor.

All were dirty, bloodied and weary from their day. None of them could truly walk at that point anymore, conjuring mats and sleeping bags out of the rusting hulks of metal artifacts strewn around the focal point of the cult's worship, that black slab of volcanic glass that, while majestic, did nothing to assuage the lingering paranoia of being attacked.

And yet... there was optimism there as the blonde woman looked at the burly man who'd just finished carving a set of runes into the stone hidden beneath a loose flagstone.

"Yes. Remember the instances where Runes & Arithmancy overlap? There's a connection in there somewhere." Krum said excitedly.

"I know. It's... a nice little tid-bit of magic I learned in third year." Cedric rattled out, a pale & exhausted face shivering through the fever his infected back had acquired.

"Can it. It's not just a tid-bit that we're looking at here. This could mark a new step in the field of magical mathematics." The blonde said as she finished examining the markings.

"Uh-huh. Yes, I am sure that it's great and all, but so what? The connection is obvious."

"I agree with Cedric. Look, I know that the runes look incredibly simple from an Arithmancers' point of view, but why is this such a revolutionary idea? It's nothing new, you know."

"It's not the runes aspect that I'm thinking about here. You know how difficult it is to craft spells and make them work as intended, right?"

"Uh-huh."

"Well, that's because the vast majority of the spell does not even touch upon the spell itself. In fact, spells generally follow the eighty-twenty rule."

"Eighty-what now?"

"The eighty-twenty rule. Twenty percent of whatever you're looking at tends to be as valuable as the remaining eighty percent. In the case of spells, roughly eighty percent of the spell is designed to stabilise and contain the remaining twenty percent." Cedric interjected.

"But why?"

"Well, mostly because that's what's needed to stop the spell from backfiring on its caster. Strip all the containment, direction and security magic off the spell itself and you're generally left with a big ole blast of energy waiting to happen."

"Okay. So what you're saying is that, without those safety spells, you just get a big boom."

"Uhh, not quite. How do I say this, huh... you still get the advertised effects, but it hits everything within range rather than what you're aiming for. Say, for example, that you did this to a colouring charm. So you take the charm to make something look hot pink, say, strip it of all its protections and then cast it. What happens?"

"It blows up, according to you."

"Right. Yes it does. But it still turns things pink. Everything hit by the magical blast turns pink, in fact. Including you. And because you probably cast the charm with the same 'strength' as a normal one, you also happened to make it four to five times stronger in the process. Meaning that you turned your entire room hot pink rather than whatever it was you were aiming for." Krum resumed.

"Ah, I get you now. That sounds superb."

"Except it isn't. Imagine doing something like that with a reducto. Or a severing charm. You'd tear everything within range, including yourself, to shreds."

"Ah. Right. But what does this have to do with Runes?"

"Runes don't have these security features included. And yet, these runes work perfectly."

"What?"

"That was my reaction too! When I analysed that rune stone's arithmantic output, all I got was the pure, underlying Block Transfer equation for the spell rather than the equation plus the massive jumble of security junk functions I was expecting. And, yet, it still works!"

Cedric looked closer at the stone now. "_Mithril_." He breathed. "I've never seen so much of it. A warding stone's worth of that stuff here…"

"And how does that help us now?"

"Well, thanks to the wards that I've carved into the stone, we still had enough space left to carve two spells into the stone. There's a wide-area _lumos_ and a standard heating charm applied to it now."

"Ah, great. Nice to know we won't freeze to death. So what are we waiting for?"

"Well, there's a small chance it might, uh, explode."

"How small a chance?"

"Single digit percentile at worst. I'm fairly certain it won't blow up in our face when we activate the stone, but we shouldn't try turning it off and on again."

"Right. Hit it."

And so Krum did, activating the warding stone with a tap of his wand. "Shit."

"What?" Fleur asked.

"The stone only has enough power to power the spells. The wards themselves are long gone." He drooped. "Magic has changed too much since those days. They will _never_ work now."

"Well, at least we got something out of it." Cedric reassured the other man. "Nothing to it but to ward a small area for ourselves."

"Again? We have to cast more magic?" the blonde girl cried out in frustration. "And we just wasted an hour getting this thing to _work. Putain!"_

Cedric dug himself deeper into his conjured sleeping bag. He was still waiting for the healing potion to kick in. He _really _wasn't in either the right shape or the right mood to calm the furious Veela.

A profound silence enveloped the trio as they mentally prepared themselves to further tax their depleted magical focus. All four contestants were outstanding in their own right, even if Rose's expertise seemed to be murder. The amount of magic they'd performed on that day would have had most wizards on their knees. And now they were about to try and cast protection wards around the church without losing either their magic or their life. They needed a miracle.

Unfortunately, their prayers were answered.

A large bang echoed through the church, startling the group into panic mode. What was it now? Would they have to fight a troll, a giant? They looked over the top of the altar, the tip of their wands glowing with reluctant anticipation of yet another fight. What they saw was their fellow contestant, frantically sealing the door behind her and casting spells at the walls and ceiling. "What the fuck do you idiots think you're doing?" The girl screamed at them. "This whole building just lit up like a fucking christmas tree! Are you trying to get yourselves killed? An-oh wait. Why do you all look like shit? Did something happen?"

"Y-you could say that." Great. Just fucking great. First the Puppets, then the Harpies, now _her_. Cedric was starting to severely doubt that he'd see the sun rise tomorrow. "What about you?"

"Demiguise." The word hung in the air as the horrified trio realised just why the Snow Queen looked like she'd run into a monster. She hadn't just run into _one_, it seemed. "They're after me. And, since you were so fucking nice to turn the only decent shelter in this shit-hole into a beacon, they're now after _all of us_! And you, badger-boy!" She said, raising a familiar-looking broom up in the air. "Why the fuck would you leave a potential escape vehicle just lying in the fucking street?"

"Wait, wait. Back up there. Demiguise?"

"Yeah, a pack of them. Maybe even the whole goddamned tribe."

"Oh great." Krum's frown grew markedly. "And because they hunt using heat signatures, then they'll be heading right here."

"Yeah."

"How long?"

"Five minutes."

"... _On est foutus._"

"Not quite." Rose stated grimly, shrugging off her bag. "See, I've got a _plan_."

* * *

They'd done the best they could on such short notice. Cedric, having gotten some firearms instruction on the bushy-haired friend of Rose's insistence, was handed the pistol she'd carried. Fleur took the sword ("_A monody bone-sword!_ Aren't they extinct" "Probably are now.") and Krum just glowered at Rose when she tried to hand off the combat knife to him.

Rose, on the other hand, headed straight for the altar, waving her strange-looking wand in order to turn it sideways. She then laid her rifle against the side of the dais and went digging in her backpack.

"Right. So Cedric, I am going to open the doors while Krum and Fleur conjure the sticky glowing powder. You are to fire at anything coming through that door. Once your pistol is empty, you are to retreat to my side in order to reload. The rest of you are to stand behind me and cast spells the second Cedric's clear. Nobody crosses my field of fire until I say so. Understood?" She said, retrieving two sturdy-looking boxes out of her bag's endless recesses.

He just nodded at the girl. She seemed to know what she was doing, having taken the five minutes to re-arrange debris and give the group a clear field of fire. Krum had repeated his prank charm trick while Fleur had _evanesco_'ed as much of the garbage as she could. The _lumos _spell was hanging in mid-air, having been moved by Cedric into the centre of the church. In the charmlight, the trio took a moment to admire the scintillating glass windows that showed pictures of serenity high above the future killing field, filling their hearts with beauty even as they mentally prepared themselves for another slaughter. Rose, on the other hand, spent her time fiddling with a strange-looking metallic goo-gaw before attaching one of the boxes to the thing's underside. She grinned as she did so. Cedric didn't ask.

Finally, thumps started echoing against the church door. Their only exit was cut off, no backing out now. The demiguise would never have tried this if it had just been Rose they were gunning for. But the prize of four magical humans rather than just the one they'd anticipated was too juicy a kill to pass up on.

Rose racked the slide on the machine gun, pulling back the bolt and shoving it into place with a practiced hand. She was grinning as she put herself into position, the heavy weapon resting on top of her bag with the butt nestled in a comfy position against her shoulder. She dug out her gnarled & ancient-looking wand, pointed it at the door and whispered _alohomara_.

The rusted lock holding the door in place shattered under the Demiguise's fierce strength, the clang of metal on stone loud enough to give both groups pause. The door opened. Cedric aimed his pistol. Rose looked down the iron sights and activated her IR vision. Point blank range. Just as she liked it.

A hoarse shout in an unrecognisable language came from the two spell-casters, the conjured cloud of glowing dust blasting the first wave of invisible monsters back a step.

Cedric saw a glowing figure rush through the opening, stumbling on some unseen jinx of Krum's. _Snap_. He missed. Seven rounds left. He saw another figure approaching more cautiously and took the time to aim. It was hideous. Few wizards ever truly saw a Demiguise with its fur on, the required _revelo_ variant far too complex and draining to ever allow a normal wizard to cast it at the beast if it's moving. Rose didn't move an inch.

Its body was that of a large, barrel-chested Ape, the fur covered in glowing dust wriggling around all over its body. Its feet were more like elongated hands than what Ced saw with his socks off, with large tufts of fur lodged between the toes. Its face was feral, two unseen eyes leaving an empty space through which you could see the dust on the other side of its head. The snout looked like a squashed birthday cake, its one nostril giving the whole thing the appearance of a cancerous anus. The thing's teeth weren't teeth from what Cedric could see. They looked more like gills he'd see when gutting a fish. He took all that in in the second he used to aim. It would stay with him for the rest of his life. _Snap_. He hit it in the snout, dead centre. Its head snapped backwards, the bluish ichor that the thing had for blood and a black lump of stuff spraying out the back of its head. A loud roar went up from the dark gloom of the snow-covered town. "Here they come!" Rose cried out, a mad cackle escaping the girl's mouth. And she was right. They were coming.

Rose aimed carefully, the weapon in her hands looking deadlier and deadlier as the seconds crawled by and the trio launched spell after spell, bullet after bullet.

Then Rose pulled the trigger. And the gun _roared_.

The three mages paused in shock as the weapon raked the entrance once, twice, three times. In less than a second, the weapon in Rose's hands had turned the entranceway into a mix of blood, guts and soggy fur before the girl re-centred her sights on the entranceway once more, the smirk twisting into a feral snarl as the machine gun took on the appearance of a metallic dragon. The smell of Cordite filled the air along with the moans of the not-so-dead monsters littering the front of the church. "Three second cool-down!" Rose shouted to them. "Keep casting!"

The trio nodded, their ears ringing with the report from the gun, and laid into the entrance with a series of blasting curses, splattering the first row of rotten pews with yet more blood and bits of Demiguise and keeping the others from entering.

"Cease fire!" Rose shouted. She then aimed at the entranceway and let loose again, emptying the box of ammunition into the darkening courtyard beyond. She smirked in satisfaction as nothing else came through the door. "Right. That should keep 'em out for now. Ced, Fleur, keep lookout. Viktor, help me pack this bad boy away." The trio nodded, Cedric and Fleur casting layered _revelio_ charms as Rose fussed with the weapon whilst giving Krum a crash course in how to take care of a gun.

In the silence, the groaning coming from the ceiling was quite loud. At least, loud enough for Rose to hear as she finished dumping the box in the bag. "Upper floors!" She shouted as she dove for her bolt-action, working the bolt as she ran. "Concentrate on the upper floor! Ced, you're with me-if they're coming from up there, it's possible that they'll also try from the front again!"

She was right. More demiguise poured through the front entrance as the other two finished blasting the upper level to rubble. At the same time, Cedric was frantically firing into the horde of incoming monsters, Rose firing almost as fast as he was despite the size of her weapon. Fleur loosened the Bone sword strapped around her hip while Krum fingered his wand grimly. A strange lassitude overcame the Hufflepuff champion. Nobody'd ever survived a Demiguise attack this strong. Hell, it'd been centuries since someone managed to kill just one of them. He was sure these creatures wouldn't let this slide. He kept firing.

Fleur and Krum backed up their two friends, casting spells at the monsters the two in front of them missed. _Snap Snap Click!_ was heard from Ced's side, his already pallid face turning a deathly shade of white. "Rose! I'm out!" The girl didn't stop reloading her gun, merely nodding while pulling the bolt back to show she'd heard before firing once more. _Crack!_ "Do you have more ammo to give?"

_Crack! "_Not right now!_" Crack! "_Shut up and start casting!_"_

"Okay!" Cedric said over the din of the dead and dying beasts littering the doorway, hitting stones and walls close to the beasts with reductos while Fleur shot fireballs at the creatures and Krum just cast as many blasting curses as he could.

Meanwhile, Rose was in a fugue state. _Fire, five rounds, pull bolt back, push bolt forward, aim, fire, four rounds, push bolt-_ ran through her mind over and over again. These weren't monsters she was firing at anymore. It was the blonde stick-lady shouting at her for not doing the dishes right. _Fire_. The blonde pig that relentlessly hit her whenever others weren't watching. _Fire_. The Fat Man. _Fire_. Cato. _Fire._ All her enemies, memories come back to haunt her, taunt her and kill her. No ammo left. No time to dig any out of the pack. Fix bayonets. Kill them. Gut them. Prove to them you are not scared. Prove to them that you are not a slave, that you will not cower and beg for your life. _Kill them! Prove them wrong! Show them how a warrior dies! Kill_!

The first notion that the others had that something was about to change was a strangled scream coming from Rose. She rose up, her rifle with a blade attached to the end of it pointing at one of the approaching monsters. With a cry of incoherent rage, the 14-year-old jumped at the massive Demiguise, a roar of "Charge!" barely audible underneath the bellow of one that seeks murder.

Fleur took that as her cue, switching her wand to her non-dominant hand and drawing Rose's bone sword with one quick movement, her avian features breaking through thanks to the fatigue and anger at these things that wanted to eat them. Krum and Cedric looked at each other, nodded wearily and took the flanks, facing the dozen glowing beasts with the wary acceptance that all would be over, one way or another, quite soon.

While the enchanted flames roared to either side of her, Rose gutted, punched, bit and smacked the butt of her rifle into the main mass of creatures, gaining a myriad of nicks, gashes and open wounds for her trouble. She screamed in rage at the host even as the terrifying appearance of a transformed Veela rained fire and sword down on their beleaguered foe.

The beasts had lost many of their number that day. Too many fathers, sons, mothers and daughters had braved the hall, looking for the easy kill of a bunch of exhausted mages. Instead, they found spears that spewed fire and death. They found a floor that would eat your feet while a flame would engulf you. And now, they found the enraged monster with black hair slick with their blood tearing at them with a spear of her own. They saw a bird-like creature screaming at them while tearing their throats out and setting them on fire. The saw two tired mages who yet held their ground against the horde. And they broke. And fled. It would be the last any human ever saw of the demiguise colony.

They would never forget this day.

* * *

As the last of the glowing figures receded into the distance, Fleur limped towards the door. She hadn't come out of the battle unscathed, none of them had. But for her, transformation was not just a figurative pain. The rage and anger full transformation brought on was due to the sheer agony of having bones and limbs reform almost instantaneously, the pain coming gradually to the fore over time in order to fuel whatever need for which she transformed. But she would pay for it tonight. Oh yes, she would pay. Yet, right now, the high of survival worked in her favour. She limped to the doors, deliberately _not _looking down and _not_ listening to the squelch underfoot lest she cap the night off with a nice vomiting session. The doors, battered and broken as they were, still shut with a BANG. A quick _coloportus_ later and she was drifting back towards where the others lay around the altar, the blood, viscera and spent shell-casings surrounding them deliberately ignored in favour of the glorious bedding they now lay down upon. Krum was just staring at the ceiling. Cedric, ever helpful, passed a bottle of some potion or other to Fleur. She looked down at herself. Her travelling robes were now just so much tattered rags. She was covered head to toe in Demiguise blood, Veela blood, Harpy blood, mud, ash, water, grime and a dozen other unnameable and probably magically resistant substances she would have to wash off the old-fashioned way. Just like Cedric. Just like Krum. She felt horrible. Unclean. _Dirty_.

And Rose... back when the fight had finished, the three of them had thought her dead. There was simply no way someone could survive with those wounds on her. And yet here she was, the worst-looking of them all, a dozen potions dribbling out of her mouth along the blackish red ridges her blood had taken after she'd bitten her tongue in battle. Her uniform, which had been brand new back when she'd seen them last, was now little more than a bra and tattered pants. The black & blue bruising indicated that she had broken her left shoulder somehow. There were cuts everywhere, to the point where it looked like someone had done a piss-poor job trying to flay the girl alive, some stab wounds still carried the bony, serrated edge of the spear in them and Fleur was pretty sure that she could see Rose's teeth through the hole in her right cheek. But, despite all this, the girl was grinning. Gleefully. The Veela felt a sense of horror well up in her. How can someone surrounded by all this... _Grin_?

The girl just looked up at her, glowing green eyes sparking in recognition of Fleur's emotions and just said two words; "We won."

And then she stood up. The day was not over yet. She still had a mountain to climb. Dimly, the group noted the way her wounds seemingly healed themselves as she limped to her backpack.

* * *

Hermione looked up in worry. "_Gabrielle?_"

* * *

**_A/N: _**_And there you have it. Not all of day two, but the rest can be worked into day three anyway, so no dramas. I hope you liked it. After this, it gets better-as in worse, tenser, more dramatic and a whole lot more horrifying. Here's hoping you'll enjoy it._


End file.
